Is the web really worldwide?

Aleks Krotoski’s research into online communities has left her wondering if the web is fulfilling its claim to be worldwide.

“My experiences with Google are likely reflected in the search patterns of people in countries I’ve never been to, by people I’ve never met, but who share similar philosophical approaches to work, life and knowledge based on our desktop culture, our the way we structure our knowledge and even our architecture. We know that these differences exist by looking at the adoption patterns of different technologies around the world. For example Baidu’s home advantage has taken the search engine to the top of the pile in China; Yandex is the dominant search engine in Russia. These market leaders in their countries suggest that these technologies do better at adapting to the needs of the local citizens than the Western-developed applications”.  Read the full article here on the BBC website.

We may be missing the smaller picture!