Global Internet traffic up 17% in Cloudflare's 2024 review

Cloudflare has published its fifth annual Year in Review, highlighting key trends and observations within the global Internet landscape for 2024.

The report, derived from Cloudflare's extensive network data, reveals that global Internet traffic saw a year-on-year increase of 17%, reflecting a continuing trend of growing connectivity and dependence on digital services worldwide.

Google continues to dominate as the most popular Internet service internationally, securing the top spot for the third consecutive year, followed by Facebook, Apple, and TikTok. Notably, WhatsApp has entered the global top ten most popular services for the first time.

Google Chrome maintains a significant lead in the browser market, capturing a 65.73% market share. Other browsers such as Safari, Edge, Firefox, and Samsung Internet trail behind.

In the realm of social media, Facebook leads, with TikTok, Instagram, X, and Snapchat comprising the rest of the top five platforms.

OpenAI remains the leading generative AI service despite increasing competition and changes in leadership among major tech companies. Newcomers Codeium, Claude, and CoPilot have made their way into the top ten, suggesting significant interest and growth in the generative AI sector.

The gaming sector has experienced significant developments, with Roblox ranking as the most popular gaming service for the fourth year running. Steam has climbed into the top five for the first time, and Minecraft has also gained a position among the top ten services.

The Gaming and Gambling industry supplanted the Finance sector as the most targeted industry for cyber threats, particularly around events like the Super Bowl in the United States. Matt Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare, noted, "Cloudflare's global network has an unmatched comprehensive view into usage, and overall quality and connectivity across the web."

Internet disruptions have increased, especially due to government-directed shutdowns. Over 221 outages were recorded globally in 2024, with more than half resulting from government actions aimed to control civil unrest, protests, or prevent exam cheating, affecting regions such as Mozambique, Iraq, Syria, Bangladesh, Senegal, and Pakistan.

Despite the pressures of greater connectivity, the Internet's danger level showed only a minor rise, with 6.5% of global traffic identified as potentially malicious, a slight increase from the previous year.

AI bots and crawlers like Bytespider (ByteDance) and ClaudeBot (Anthropic) remained active throughout the year, though their traffic levels showed a gradual decline.

David Belson, Head of Data Insight at Cloudflare, commented, "Cloudflare Radar was launched in 2020 when we witnessed the drastic impact the pandemic had on the way we interact with the Internet, and the importance for those insights to be accessible to anyone. Our Year in Review is a part of Radar's commitment to democratise Cloudflare's data, offering a window into Internet trends and patterns for anyone to explore at their fingertips."