And we will all look like geniuses for being early, or look like the fool if it never eventuates. I'm willing to take this chance! For comparison, things take time and exponentially grow! Internet has an official birthday of 1983. In 1996, there were approximately 45 million people using the internet. By 1999, the number of worldwide internet users reached 150 million, and more than half of them were from the United States. In 2000, there were 407 million users in 218 of the 246 countries in the world. !tip 1