Technology
From Amazon to Zoom: What Happens in an Internet Minute In 2021?
From Amazon to Zoom: An Internet Minute In 2021
In our everyday lives, not much may happen in a minute. But when gauging the depth of internet activity occurring all at once, it can be extraordinary. Today, around five billion internet users exist across the globe.
This annual infographic from Domo captures just how much activity is going on in any given minute, and the amount of data being generated by users. To put it mildly, there’s a lot.
The Internet Minute
At the heart of the world’s digital activity are the everyday services and applications that have become staples in our lives. Collectively, these produce unimaginable quantities of user activity and associated data.
Here are just some of the key figures of what happens in a minute:
- Amazon customers spend $283,000
- 12 million people send an iMessage
- 6 million people shop online
- Instacart users spend $67,000
- Slack users send 148,000 messages
- Microsoft Teams connects 100,000 users
- YouTube users stream 694,000 videos
- Facebook Live receives 44 million views
- Instagram users share 65,000 photos
- Tiktok users watch 167 million videos
As these facts show, Big Tech companies have quite the influence over our lives. That influence is becoming difficult to ignore, and draws increasing media and political attention. And some see this attention as a plausible explanation for why Facebook changed their name—to dissociate from their old one in the process.
One tangible measure of this influence is the massive amount of revenue Big Tech companies bring in. To get a better sense of this, we can look at Big Tech’s revenue generating capabilities on a per-minute basis as well:
Company | Revenue Per Minute |
---|---|
Amazon | $955,517 |
Apple | $848,090 |
Alphabet (Google) | $433,014 |
Microsoft | $327,823 |
$213,628 | |
Tesla | $81,766 |
Netflix | $50,566 |
Much of the revenue that these elite trillion-dollar stocks generate can be traced back to all the activity on their various networks and platforms.
In other words, the 5.7 million Google searches that occur every minute is the key to their $433,014 in per minute sales.
The Internet Minute Over The Years
With the amount of data and information in the digital universe effectively doubling every two years, it’s fair to say the internet minute has gone through some changes over the years. Here are just some areas that have experienced impressive growth:
- In 2016, Snapchat users 527k photos per minute, compared to 2 million in 2021
- In 2017, Twitter saw 452k Tweets per minute, compared to 575k in 2021
- In 2018, $862,823 was spent online shopping, while 2 million people were shopping per minute in 2021
- In 2019, 4.5 million videos on YouTube were being viewed every minute, while in 2021 users were streaming 694k hours
- In 2020, Netflix users streamed 404k hours per minute, growing to 452k hours in 2021
Here’s a look at the services that have been featured in the various iterations of this graphic over the years:
Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube are the only three brands to be featured every single year.
Internet Growth Perspectives
The Internet Minute wheel also helps to put the internet’s rapid rate of adoption into perspective. For instance, in 1993, there were only 14 million internet users across the globe. But today, there are over 14 million just in Chile.
That said, the total addressable market still has some room left. By some measures, the complete number of internet users grew by 500 million in 2021, a roughly 11% jump from 4.5 billion users in 2020. This comes out to an astonishing 950 new users on a per minute basis.
What’s more, in the long term, with the appropriate infrastructure in place, certain areas within emerging markets can experience buoyant growth in the number of connected citizens. Here’s where the next billion internet users may come from, based on the largest disconnected populations.
Rank | Country / Territory | Unconnected People | % of Population |
---|---|---|---|
1 | India | 685,591,071 | 50% |
2 | China | 582,063,733 | 41% |
3 | Pakistan | 142,347,735 | 65% |
4 | Nigeria | 118,059,925 | 58% |
5 | Bangladesh | 97,427,352 | 59% |
6 | Indonesia | 96,709,226 | 36% |
7 | Ethiopia | 92,385,728 | 81% |
8 | Democratic Republic of Congo | 71,823,319 | 81% |
9 | Brazil | 61,423,295 | 29% |
10 | Egypt | 46,626,170 | 46% |
With this growth trajectory in mind, we can expect future figures to become even more astonishing. But the human mind is known to be bad at interpreting large numbers, so in future editions, the internet minute figures may need to be stripped down to the internet second.
Technology
Nvidia Joins the Trillion Dollar Club
America’s biggest chipmaker Nvidia has joined the trillion dollar club as advancements in AI move at lightning speed.

Nvidia Joins the Trillion Dollar Club
Chipmaker Nvidia is now worth nearly as much as Amazon.
America’s largest semiconductor company has vaulted past the $1 trillion market capitalization mark, a milestone reached by just a handful of companies including Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. While many of these are household names, Nvidia has only recently gained widespread attention amid the AI boom.
The above graphic compares Nvidia to the seven companies that have reached the trillion dollar club.
Riding the AI Wave
Nvidia’s market cap has more than doubled in 2023 to over $1 trillion.
The company designs semiconductor chips that are made of silicon slices that contain specific patterns. Just like you flip an electrical switch by turning on a light at home, these chips have billions of switches that process complex information simultaneously.
Today, they are integral to many AI functions—from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to image generation. Here’s how Nvidia stands up against companies that have achieved the trillion dollar milestone:
Joined Club | Market Cap in trillions | Peak Market Cap in trillions |
|
---|---|---|---|
Apple | Aug 2018 | $2.78 | $2.94 |
Microsoft | Apr 2019 | $2.47 | $2.58 |
Aramco | Dec 2019 | $2.06 | $2.45 |
Alphabet | Jul 2020 | $1.58 | $1.98 |
Amazon | Apr 2020 | $1.25 | $1.88 |
Meta | Jun 2021 | $0.68 | $1.07 |
Tesla | Oct 2021 | $0.63 | $1.23 |
Nvidia | May 2023 | $1.02 | $1.02 |
Note: Market caps as of May 30th, 2023
After posting record sales, the company added $184 billion to its market value in one day. Only two other companies have exceeded this number: Amazon ($191 billion), and Apple ($191 billion).
As Nvidia’s market cap reaches new heights, many are wondering if its explosive growth will continue—or if the AI craze is merely temporary. There are cases to be made on both sides.
Bull Case Scenario
Big tech companies are racing to develop capabilities like OpenAI. These types of generative AI require vastly higher amounts of computing power, especially as they become more sophisticated.
Many tech giants, including Google and Microsoft use Nvidia chips to power their AI operations. Consider how Google plans to use generative AI in six products in the future. Each of these have over 2 billion users.
Nvidia has also launched new products days since its stratospheric rise, spanning from robotics to gaming. Leading the way is the A100, a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) well-suited for machine learning. Additionally, it announced a new supercomputer platform that Google, Microsoft, and Meta are first in line for. Overall, 65,000 companies globally use the company’s chips for a wide range of functions.
Bear Case Scenario
While extreme investor optimism has launched Nvidia to record highs, how do some of its fundamental valuations stack up to other giants?
As the table below shows, its price to earnings (P/E) ratio is second-only to Amazon, at 214.4. This shows how much a shareholder pays compared to the earnings of a company. Here, the company’s share price is over 200 times its earnings on a per share basis.
P/E Ratio | Net Profit Margin (Annual) | |
---|---|---|
Apple | 30.2 | 25.3% |
Microsoft | 36.1 | 36.7% |
Aramco | 13.5 | 26.4% |
Alphabet | 28.2 | 21.2% |
Amazon | 294.2 | -0.5% |
Meta | 33.9 | 19.9% |
Tesla | 59.0 | 15.4% |
Nvidia | 214.4 | 16.19% |
Consider how this looks for revenue of Nvidia compared to other big tech names:
$NVDA $963 billion market cap, 38x Revenue
$MSFT $2.5 trillion market cap, 12x Revenue$TSLA $612 billion market cap, 7.8x Revenue$AAPL $2.75 trillion market cap, 7.3x Revenue$GOOG $1.6 trillion market cap, 6.1x Revenue$META $672 billion market cap, 6x Revenue pic.twitter.com/VgkKAfiydx— Martin Pelletier (@MPelletierCIO) May 29, 2023
For some, Nvidia’s valuation seems unrealistic even in spite of the prospects of AI. While Nvidia has $11 billion in projected revenue for the next quarter, it would still mean significantly higher multiples than its big tech peers. This suggests the company is overvalued at current prices.
Nvidia’s Growth: Will it Last?
This is not the first time Nvidia’s market cap has rocketed up.
During the crypto rally of 2021, its share price skyrocketed over 100% as demand for its GPUs increased. These specialist chips help mine cryptocurrency, and a jump in demand led to a shortage of chips at the time.
As cryptocurrencies lost their lustre, Nvidia’s share price sank over 46% the following year.
By comparison, AI advancements could have more transformative power. Big tech is rushing to partner with Nvidia, potentially reshaping everything from search to advertising.
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