Growth of the Internet

On the LDS Media Talk Blog, there was a post about the growth of the Internet.   I wondered if the growth has been increasing or decreasing, or if it is reaching a plateau.

To answer that question, I decided to plot the numbers on a logarithmic scale:

Using a logarithmic scale, it is easy to see the rate of growth.  As you can see, up until 1997 there was a very substantial growth.  In 1996, for example, the Internet grew by 900%.  Between 1998 and 2001 growth slowed so that it only (on average) doubled in each of those years.  Since then, we’ve established a slower, yet still substantial rate of doubling only every two or three years.