I'm all for independent verification, especially given the difficulty of figuring out what exactly is getting measured here, but I don't
right, most sources of this data don't give very much detail about their collection methods or possibly inaccurate data. [for instance - how many of these internet users are multilingual with english and some other language readily accessible to them? how many are multilingual with at least minimal competence in four or five of the top 100 languages spoken/written worldwide? how are these people being counted? these are the fun questions...]
follow the logic that because they want to sell more statistics, theirs can't be trusted. Are they more likely to sell future statistics if they misrepresent or make errors? Are there specific ways in which you have reason to believe their estimates are innaccurate?
i can understand your skepticism. perfectly sensible. back-story: global reach sells a lot of things. ;) one of their other big markets is translation services - they would love to help translate your corporate site into twenty languages, if you can afford it. in this case, i think a bit of slightly anti-corporate bias is justified. if their statistics are biased toward a view of multilingual use on the internet as successful [rather than a view of the computing landscape as dominated or colonialized by English-language material], then perhaps it helps their business case. "perhaps" may be "significantly" if it means the difference between (say) 35% and 60% English-language penetration net-wide. this is all supposition, still, but it definitely seems a good time for CYA approaches. and i think i'm showing my personal biases a bit too clearly. [Nancy, I forgot to thank you for sending the links. *blush*] best, elijah