As we dive into another uncertain year, I find it comforting to be working on the 2022 edition of the Web Globalization Report Card. It gives me a chance to step outside of my world and look across the entire World Wide Web, so to speak. I also spend quite a bit of time looking across multiple years of data for patterns and trends.
And one trend holds true, even through all the madness of the past few years — web globalization keeps growing. That is, more companies are embracing web globalization. And those that have already embraced it continue to expand their investments as well as linguistic reach.
As you can see below, the average number of languages supported by the leading global brands surpassed 30 in 2015, though the rate of growth has slowed considerably.
Amazon also went on a significant growth spurt over the past year. In 2005, Amazon supported five languages; it supports more than 20 languages today (which is still well below average).
Spotify also nearly doubled its language portfolio last year. And this trend is not unique to tech companies.
Companies such as Gucci, Marriott and Mercedes all added languages over the past twelve months, a sign of optimism during an otherwise pessimistic year.
I suspect that we’ll see the average number of languages supported by the leading global brands increase this year. More on that in a future post.
2022 Web Globalization Report Card
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