According to a report that was released on Friday by ComScore, global Internet usage surpassed the 1 billion users threshold in December 2008, with 41.3 percent of them having been in the Asia-Pacific region.

The study focused on Internet users over the age of 15 who accessed the web from their home or work computers and found that the largest number of people who had surfed the Internet were from Europe, with 28 percent, while the United States grabbed an 18.4 percent piece of the global audience cake.

Nevertheless, Jamie Gavin, a ComScore senior analyst, said that Latin America, which accounted for only 7.4 percent of the global Internet audience, was the region to keep an eye on, since it was bound to gain momentum within following years by virtue of social networking and the mobile Internet.

In terms of countries, China made for the the most Internet users worldwide, with a 17.8 share of unique visitors, followed by the United States with 16.2 percent, while Japan scored the third position with only 6 percent.

Where Internet properties are concerned, Google managed to grab a large share of the global Internet market, having registered 77 percent of the worldwide visitors, which translates as approximately 776 million users.

Tech giant Microsoft’s websites were accessed by 64.2 percent of users worldwide, while Yahoo ones drew 55.8 percent of the web surfers and Time Warner's AOL’s sites were used by 27.1 percent of the worldwide Internet audience.