Who is the web-savviest nation of them all? Not the United States, even though they held the title for three years running. Not Singapore, which was my guess (it is easy to run fiber optics over an entire island). According to IBM and the Economist, Sweden is now the most web-savvy nation of all.

"E-readiness" criteria spans a wide range, from telephone penetration to online security to intellectual property protection, translating into whether a country's business environment is conducive to Internet-based commercial opportunities. Covering the world's largest markets, the rankings aim to provide a useful guide for companies seeking to invest in technology-savvy countries, as well as governments looking to reap the benefits of the digital age.

"Northwest Europe, North America and Australia are at virtually similar levels," said Peter Korsten, European executive director at IBM's Institute for Business Value. Absent from the top 15 were France and Italy, which were clearly second league in "connectivity" and "consumer and business adoption". "They're laggards and that's a bit scary," Korsten said

I can understand why France is a laggard. Before the internet was adopted by the public, the French led the world with an innovative Minitel system that gave consumers access to some databases from home. Consumers could contact their banks, check movie times, and do many things that we now all do via the internet. And the French were doing this with Minitel long before the first web browser was created in the States. However, IMO, this is a large reason why the French have been very slow to adopt the internet. They already had some of the benefits, so they had less to gain by converting to the internet. However, I do not understand why Italy is lagging the rest of Europe. If anyone has any ideas, send me an email (quixote at this site dot com).

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