According to recent estimates there were 6.6 billion people in the world in 2007. Of that number, 1.15 billion (17.5%) were regular Internet users. By 2012, eMarketer projects that over 1.7 billion people worldwide (24.5%) will access the Internet at least once a month.
This year will see China overtake the United States as the most populous Internet nation in the world and the Asia-Pacific region will top 500 million Internet users.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the governance of the Internet when more and more countries surpass us in total Internet usage. I know a lot of countries (particularly Europe) don’t like the fact that the US controls so much of the Internet, as far as making the rules. I’d imagine it will be harder for us to retain control of the governing bodies when other countries can say that their people use it more than us.