WebProNews

Saint Patrick's Day tends to involve as much Irish-themed stuff as 24 hours can contain.  Our direction has been at least temporarily pointed towards another part of the world, however, since China has become the world's largest Internet market.

 Duncan Clark - BDA Chairman

Research firm BDA gave the country this title, and its move was based on a comparison of Internet populations.  Previously, the U.S. had the world's largest, but China, which had 210 million Internet users at the end of 2007, seems to have passed us by.

"A buoyant economy, massive investments in broadband infrastructure and strong consumer demand for applications including online games, instant messaging and online-music and online-video sharing are fuelling China's rapid Internet growth," stated BDA Chairman Duncan Clark.  America, in contrast, seems to struggling on those first two fronts.

More money still goes into U.S. online advertising and e-commerce than the Chinese equivalents, but BDA believes that extreme growth may take place on those fronts, as well.

Meanwhile, to return to the reason most of us are wearing green, we'll go ahead and note that Google China does not bear any sort of Saint Patrick's Day doodle.