I have always been a big fan of Scandinavia particularly of Sweden and Finland. Living in Canada, the closest I came to visiting these countries was during the annual World Junior Hockey Championships over the Christmas break when these countries hosted the event and I would watch the games on TV. The cities look beautiful, the people seem energetic and happy. I would like to visit Scandinavia some time in the future as I have never been out of North America.

So as I was looking up some Internet usage stats the other day, I came across some data from comScore that indicated the most popular search engines in European countries including Finland and Sweden. Think Google is the most popular search engine in Scandinavia? Well think again. To my surprise Microsoft (MSN and Live Search) appears to be the search engine of choice in Norway and Sweden. Google is the top search engine in Denmark and Finland however. Some other interesting points,

• The Netherlands and Scandinavian countries have the highest percentage of their populations using the Internet, ranging from 68 percent to 83 percent.
• European users average 16.5 usage days per month. Countries that have usage days below the European average are Russia (11.4 average usage days), Austria (12.0), Italy (12.9), Ireland (13.0), Portugal (13.4), Norway (14.7), Denmark (14.7), Switzerland (15.1), Belgium (15.5) and Finland (16.4).
• The average Swedish user views 4,019 pages per month and views more pages than any other country – 51 percent above the European average of 2,662 pages per month.

Labels: internet usage scandinavia