Brazilians boost Google

Brazil’s technology sector has been gradually catching the world’s attention in recent years. As we mentioned in June, Indian tech firms have increasingly outsourced their work to Brazil partly due to adopting a "western" business culture.

Brazil’s tech growth has also expanded to an increase in computer and internet users. One estimate claims that one in five Brazilians has internet access though that number is expected to grow as “an expanding economy lifting millions into a middle class for whom computers are no longer beyond reach.” According to Ibope Nielsen Online, over 36 million Brazilians were active internet users in July alone.

Thus, it should be no surprise then that Brazil is the top country where sites on the Google network are visited. Much like India, credit for that can be given to the local popularity for Orkut-Google’s social network- despite it being a failure everywhere else. Yet it’s more than just Orkut wrote Miguel Helft of the New York Times’ Bits blog:

Andrew Lipsman, director of industry analysis for comScore, said that Google’s dominance in those countries has historical reasons. While on opposite sides of the world, when it comes to the Internet, India and Brazil developed in parallel, he said.

“Part of the explanation was that Google emerged onto the scene at the time these markets were developing,” Mr. Lispman said. “As Google became the default search engine, the brand extended to these other services” …

India and Brazil are ranked 7th and 9th in terms Internet usage globally. They are also two of the fastest-growing markets.

Image- New York Times (“Isis Cordeiro, pointing, and Jennifer Patrochinio, right, attending a class on computers in Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian government has plans to help millions of low-income people buy their first computers.”)
Online Sources- Bits, pr-inside.com, TMCnet, The Latin Americanist