Google remains the world's most popular internet service in 2025, with ChatGPT and generative AI experiencing rapid growth and gaining significant user engagement, alongside stable dominance by platforms like Facebook and YouTube. The report highlights a 19% increase in global internet traffic and the rising influence of AI and Asian e-commerce platforms.
Cloudflare's 2025 Year in Review reports a 19% increase in global internet traffic, driven by increased online activity, AI bot proliferation (4.2%), and the expansion of services like Starlink, which contributed to internet growth, while Google remains the dominant web service and Android leads mobile traffic.
The UK's new laws requiring websites to verify users' ages through face scans or ID have led to a decrease in traffic on compliant sites, while non-compliant porn sites have experienced a surge in visitors, highlighting unexpected consequences of the regulation.
Google's AI Overview feature, introduced in 2023, is significantly reducing traffic to original content creators by providing AI-generated summaries that often do not link back to the original sources, risking the decline of credible journalism and small businesses, and increasing the potential for misinformation and exploitation of the system.
Internet traffic dropped by 40 percent or more in states along the path of totality during the recent eclipse, as viewers took a break from their devices to witness the celestial spectacle. Cloudflare reported significant dips in internet activity in states such as Maine, New Hampshire, and Ohio, with even partial eclipse viewers in New York experiencing a 29 percent drop. The eclipse's path of totality, spanning from Mexico to Canada, saw varying degrees of internet traffic reduction, with some areas experiencing up to a 60 percent decrease.