Drop-down lists United States often first

[marmaduke]

Don't people agree that after United States being often placed at the top of an alphabetical list of countries, United Kingdom should be second?

[Pickle]

It's just done because the vast majority of internet users on the sites that use the lists are American.  It's certainly not done because Americans can't find U in the alphabet.

[marmaduke]

Yes, yes, I know all that but wouldn't it just be a lot easier for Britishers to be able to be second, since I'm sure they're the second most frequent users?

[kempie]

marmaduke - how are you 'sure' ?

[Potatoman]

I wish that was all i had to worry about! lol

[IndieSinger]

If you don't mind me saying, marmaduke, that's quite an arrogant assumption. I cannot find any statistics to back up your suggestion that the United Kingdom has the second highest number of Internet users.

In fact, according to InternetWorldStats, the UK, with 35,179,141 Internet users, comes in only 6th, behind the United States (200,933,147), China (94,000,000), Japan (67,677,947), Germany (46,312,662) and India (39,200,000). We represent only 4% of the Internet users of the world compared with, for example, Germany at 5.2%.

But then you have to think about the language the page is written in and the people it's aimed at. But just because a page isn't written in or for those with a different alphabet to ours doesn't mean it isn't aimed and/or intended for them. So the Chinese and Japanese have more right to be below the United States in drop-down lists than we do in the United Kingdom.

 

 

[IndieSinger]

By the way - that site also has some other interesting statistics. For example, did you know that at 58.7% we are only 14th in the "Internet Penetration Rate" table? That is only 58.7% of United Kingdomers have the Internet. We are behind countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland... and only 1.4% higher than Liechtenstein.

We're also behind France (and six other countries) when it comes to DSL Broadband subscriber league tables.

[Hammer]

Indie, would that language you are talking about be 'US English' by any chance ;-)

[marmaduke]

So what. United Kingdom should be second.