How many people on the internet speak English as a first or second
langauge, and what is the size of the next largest language group?

Dear clayshirky-ga:

According to the most recent statistics (Nov 2001) from the United
States Internet Council, there are 225 million English speakers on the
internet, which comprises 45% of the Internet population. The detailed
break downs of the language groups, however, is not available from
public sources. The "State of the Internet" report must be purchased
from the United States Internet Council at:
http://www.usic.org/

However, GlobalReach (http://www.glreach.com) offers a global internet
statistics webpage by language. According to that page, 40%, or 228
million people on the internet speak english. The size of the next
largest language group is Chinese, at 9.8% and 55.5 million. The full
chart is available on line here:
http://www.glreach.com/globstats/

Google Search Terms:

    language statistics internet
    ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=language+statistics+internet


I hope this was what you're looking for. If any of the above
information was not clear, please don't hesitate to ask for a
clarification. I would be more than happy to assist you further.

Best Regards,
blader-ga

Thanks Blader, just what I wanted.

-clay

For a visual representation of languages used to access Google, check
out Google's Zeitgeist:
://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html