Here is my guide to the global Internet.
Note 1: This blog is written in early 2025. Things might change in the future. I don't speak or understand Japanese, Korean, Persian, Czech. I only speak Chinese(native), English(fluent and functional), Russian(intermediate), German(beginner) at the moment, so this table may be limited.
Note 2: Many US services are also (sadly) dominant globally. I am only listing services owned/originated from the country. "/" entries indicate no known local dominant player. The 'Other' column also includes prominent open-source alternatives.
| US | China | Russia | Germany | Japan | Korea | Other | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Google, Bing | 百度,搜狗 | Яндекс | / | Yahoo | Naver | Seznam |
| Video | YouTube, Twitch | Bilibili | Вк видео, Rutube | / | Niconico | SOOP, Naver TV, Kakao TV | Aparat, Stream.cz, PeerTube |
| Shorts | YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels | 微信视频号,抖音(Tiktok) | Вк кливы, Яппи | / | Line Voom | Naver TV clips | Likee |
| Chat | Whatsapp, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Signal | 微信, QQ | Telegram(in Dubai now), VK Мессенджер | / | Line | KakaoTalk | Viber, Matrix |
| Social Media | X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Tumblr | 微博,小红书 | Вконтакте, Одноклассники | / | Mixi | BAND | Mastodon, Eitaa |
| Jobs | BOSS 直聘 | HeadHunter | Rikunabi | Saramin | Volnamista | ||
| Forums/Q&A | Reddit, Quora, Hacker News | 知乎,贴吧 | Пикабу | Gutefrage | Chiebukuro, 2channel | DCinside | Lemmy |
| Movies | IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes | 豆瓣电影 | Кинопоиск | / | Watcha | Naver Movie | AlloCine |
| Blogging | Medium, Substack | 微信公众号, 知乎专栏,CSDN | Дзен, Хабр | / | Note.com | Naver Blog, Daum Cafe | / |
| Shopping | Amazon, eBay | 京东,淘宝,拼多多 | Озон, Вайлдберриз | Zalando | Rakuten | Coupang | / |
| Money | Paypal, Google Pay | 微信,支付宝 | Юмани | / | Line Pay | Naver Pay, Kakao Pay | / |
| Maps | Google Maps, Apple Maps | 高德地图, 百度地图 | Яндекс Карты, 2gis | Here Maps | Yahoo! Japan Maps | Naver Map | Mapy.cz, Mappy, OpenStreetMap |
| News | ABC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC | 央视, CGTN, SCMP | Первый, Россия 1, RT | DW, ARD, ZDF | NHK World | MBC | BBC, TRT World, Sky News, France 24, Al Jazeera |
| Sports | ESPN, NBC | CCTV5 | Матч ТВ | Kicker | NHK Sports | Naver Sports, Daum Sports | Sport.cz |
| Gmail, Outlook, iCloud | 163 | Яндекс Почта, Mail.ru | GMX | Yahoo Mail | Naver Mail | Proton, Seznam Mail | |
| Mobile | Google Play, Apple Appstore | 应用宝,华为应用市场 | Русторе | / | / | Galaxy Store | Cafe Bazaar, F-Droid |
| Cloud | AWS, Azure, GCP | 阿里云,腾讯云,华为云 | Яндекс.Облако, Селектел, Таймвеб | Ionos, Hetzner | NTT, Fujitsu | Naver, Kakao, Samsung | Upcloud, OVH |
| Translation | Google Translate, Bing Translate | 百度翻译 | Яндекс Переводчик | DeepL | / | Naver Papago | Seznam Slovník |
| LLM | Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude | DeepSeek, Qwen | Гигачат, Яндекс Алиса | / | / | / | Mistral AI |
| Literature | Goodreads | 豆瓣读书 | лайвлиб, Яндекс книгу | LovelyBooks | Bookmeter | Aladin | / |
| Git | Github | Gitee | Gitflic | / | / | / | Gitlab |
| Wiki | Wikipedia | 百度百科 | Рувики | / | / | Namu | EcuRed |
| Archive | Internet Archive | / | / | / | / | / | archive.today |
We can rank them based on the relative usage of local platforms roughly:
- US
- China
- Russia
- South Korea
- Japan
- Iran
- Czech
- Germany/France
Most of it is pretty understandable, how that China build a completely parallel system and have a firewall against everything, and how Russia is doing the same under geopolitical tensions, post-2022 many platforms such as YouTube, Instagram is blocked but young people still use International platforms. Then it's South Korea with a booming tech industry(Samsung, LG, Navar, Kakao) despite a smaller population, and Japan, with unique cultures and strong local presence that aren't fully represented in the western internet(but I don't actually know much about Japan/Korea now though). Then it's Iran, a closed and isolated country, with local alternatives but not as developed. Then it's Czechia, this one is surprising, since its neighbors, the other western slavic countries(Poland, Slovakia) or Hungary, or Germanic countries like Austria or Germany, or other Romance countries do not have their own platforms, but Czechia has a tech giant called Seznam. Germany and France, other European countries, Middle Eastern countries, South and Southeast Asian countries, South American countries, are far more embedded deeply within the global(basically US) platform, using primarily services based on US. I don't know much about other countries such as North Korea, Cuba though.
The same applies to learning languages and part of culture(my partial intepretation), from my native Chinese and English I get 2 equally immensely different perspectives and alternative world. Russia is caught somewhere in the middle, both the integration and isolation, and a very distinct perspective. If you learn Korean or Japanese, you also get strong perspective and local cultues, though less "isolated", while Iran/Persian is like, isolated but with resilient local platforms and rich culture, while if you learn German/French/Italian/Spanish(the popular languages I think lol) you get the least and mostly something much more similar to the US.
And also it relates partially to "ethnic state" or like, linguistic distance, and how Germany/France/Nordic is just more open to outsiders and immigration, and their languages is much easier coming from English.