From Lenta.ru:
Russian has become the second most popular language on the internet
Russian language has made it into second place in terms of online popularity, slightly ahead of German. This was reported in the results of a study by W3Techs.
The leader in the list of major languages was English by a long way, around 54.7 percent of pages and documents are written in English. Russian and German have approximately 5.9 percent, but the Russian language segment is slightly larger.
Next, with a gap of about one percent was Spanish (including Catalan), French, Chinese and Japanese. However, if only the top one thousand respected resources on the internet are considered, then Russian falls to sixth place, and French, German, Japanese and Chinese (it’s not clear from the study whether its variants are considered separately) jumped forward.
The domain zone .ru came first out of national domains back in September 2011, coming second only to .com and .net. In addition to the continued growth of sites with the .ru TLD, the domain .su is still growing. Russian is still the most popular language on websites from the larger countries of the former USSR – Ukraine, Belorus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and others.
Comments from VKontakte:
Boris Vilkovysky:
I’ll drink to that
Vladislav Romanov:
I’m going to go and buy some delicious vodka for my bear. Let him play the balalaika.
Vladimir Mironov:
In Rashka, there’s only freedom on the internet, so everyone hangs out there.
Sergey Yudin:
I, for the first time in a couple of months, am really proud of Rashka.
Sergey Chudinovskikh:
So, this is all about how the Russians have shat all over the internet.
Easy Target:
Need to add the Russian-speaking Ukrainians and the Belorussians to that.
Oleg Lurye:
That’s because everyone else is working, while Russian speakers are wasting their time on the internet ))
Vlad Popov:
It’s good news at any rate ))
Maurice Biernandotte:
That’s because for the most part, Russians don’t give a shit about learning English
Nikolay Rovensky:
More popular than Chinese?? Well blow me!