A map of the Internet drawn like the ancient ones.
It is the idea of a Slovak designer, Martin Vargic, who has depicted 3,000 popular websites and internet services on a map as if they were countries and continents.
The designer has dimensioned giants including Google, Facebook and Wikipedia as small continents and, in contrast, smaller nations and islands such as Patreon, Kickstarter and GoFundMe, in the sea of startups.
The cartography examines the Alexa web traffic ranking from January 2020 to January 2021 and includes, in addition to portals and social networks, also the largest providers of digital connections and infrastructures, the 'backbones' of the network. Vargic spent 1,000 hours researching key features of each individual site to detail the map.
Alongside the most popular sites, it has also included the main languages found on the web, as well as platforms used almost exclusively in certain places, such as Russia and China. Around the main map, the graphics also include a wealth of additional information, including the largest internet-related companies, the list of major blocking sites in the world, and the best-selling video games of all time. But also the share of the population that uses the network, the cost and speed of broadband and the levels of internet censorship.
In an interview with Forbes, Vargic says the 2021 map will serve as the historical foundation of what the internet is like today: "In the future, popularity is bound to change and this map can provide an unprecedented view of what the web once was." . Vargic released his first map in 2014, inspired by Randall Munroe's online communities.