• Atlantic magazine, Monday, November 7, 2011 1:30 PM

So, what’s the Web really worth? Leave it to McKinsey to do the math. According to a new report by the U.S. consulting firm, The Internet -- an $8 trillion global economy made up of some 200 million consumers -- has accounted for 21% of GDP growth in the world's largest economies over the last 5 years.

“As an entity, it accounts for more GDP than the Spanish or Canadian economies, and it's growing faster than Brazil,” The Atlantic notes, citing McKinsey’s research. “As a sector, it is now larger than these countries' agriculture or energy industries.”

Because “there is a lot of Internet to measure,” McKinsey said it limited its report to the online economy in the G-8 countries plus five more: Brazil, China, India, South Korea and Brazil. It defined Internet activities as private consumption (electronic equipment, e-commerce, broadband subscriptions, mobile Internet, and hardware and software consumption); private investment (from the telecommunications industry and the maintenance of extranet, intranet, and Web sites); public expenditure (spending and buying by government in software hardware and services); and trade (which accounts for exports of Internet equipment plus business-to-business services with overseas companies).

Read the whole story at Atlantic magazine »