14 DAY TRIAL // Trying to put the hype into numbers, McKinsey & Company concluded a research to evaluate the Internet's impact on the World's economy. It approximates the Internet's total revenue at around $8 trillion.
The research only took data from 13 countries, the G8, meaning Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with additional data from the O5 group, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.
Transposing the revenue into a GDP factor, the Internet accounted for 21 percent of GDP growth in the World's largest economies over the last 5 statistical years.
In the countries selected for this study, the Internet accounted for 3.4% of the total GDP. It must be noted that the GDP of the 13 selected economies amasses for 70% of the entire global GDP.
For a matter of fact, the Internet for itself has a higher GDP rating than some well developed countries like Canada and Spain.
Including all the countries in the statistic, the Internet still racks up 2.9% of the World's total GDP.
As an individual sector in the economical landscape, the Internet brings more bulk to the total GDP of the 13 selected countries than classic sectors like Education (3%), Communications (3%), Agriculture (2.2%), Utilities (2.1%) and Mining (1.7%) (see image below).
These numbers would put the Internet as the 7th most important sector as per GDP percentage.
In some countries like France, Sweden or the United Kingdom, the Internet is in the center of the economy, with a huge influence on how these countries have evolved and how they're circulating money right now.
In Sweden and Great Britain, the Internet GDP's value contributes for more than 6% from the country's entire GDP sum.
At the opposite end, Russia has the lowest GDP contribution from Internet-related sectors, at under 1% in it's GDP total.
In a previous study by the same researcher, it was discovered that the Internet destroyed over 500,000 jobs in the past 15 years in France, but at the same time, it created 1.2 million new jobs.
McKinsey & Company also concludes that if investments are to be made in Internet infrastructure and public awareness, the impact on slow developing (under-developed) countries could spur a growth in their total economy, while also modernizing it at the same time.
