If you take a look at a database of more than 120 million domains, you get a lot of amazing information.
Few people know, for instance, that 2% of all Web domains can be found on a single IP address.
Just think of the power one possesses in controlling an IP address-like 68.
178.
232.
99-that is home to 2% of all domain names.
Some sites have even more than this, though.
In a detailed study of the world's top 100 hosting companies assessed by numbers of parked domains, the leader came out as GoDaddy Ltd.
of Scottsdale, Arizona with some 20 million.
In second place was the German company PlusLine Systemhas GmbH, who serve just two million.
In terms of zones, dominance can be seen again, though it's less surprising here: 86 million are .
coms, 13 million .
nets, 8 million .
orgs and 5.
4 million .
infos.
All of the remaining top-level domains have fewer than 10% of these numbers.
The same is evident on a more technical level with networks: the most densely populated class 'A' network (68.
X.
X.
X) currently has 15 million domains, but its nearest competitor (64.
X.
X.
X) has less than three times this number.
Most revealingly, however, such differences are evident in language.
Looking at the whole 120 million-strong database, 71.
5% of all websites have English as their primary language with only 6.
9% in Chinese, 3.
7% in Spanish, 3.
1% in French and 2.
6% in Japanese.
These figures bear little relation to population counts, and so are interesting insights into how world politics are reflected online.
As with real life, monopolies are a fact of the online community, too.