5 billion people to be using internet by 2020 - Google

The world’s online population will double to five billion by 2020 presenting “huge” business opportunities for tech start-ups on the cutting edge of the unprecedented expansion, the head of Google Europe said Thursday. Google Europe president Matt Brittin said in Warsaw as he opened his company’s fifth “campus” for IT start-ups.

“The connected population is going to double in five years. Five billion online. Everyone with the entire Internet in their pockets,”
“That’s a huge opportunity,” he said, adding that “this is a transformational period.”
“Five years where we’ll go from a minority to a majority of the people on the planet being connected. That’s why the moment is now for start-ups to look up and out and think about that market of five billion people that you can connect with in the next five years.”

Brittin said that although Google is a search engine, it has also become “a growth engine for entrepreneurs and for the economy”.

“Today we see millions of companies who are growing and exporting by accessing tools, talent, technology, sales and distribution around the world. We call them the ‘micro-multinationals’. Every start-up can be global from its birth.”