Canada fourth on global index measuring the web's impact

Canada ranks 4th overall on an index that measures the web's impact in 61 countries around the world.

Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web Foundation has compiled the Web Index, which uses 85 indicators to measure the impact of the web, as well as the state of a country's infrastructure and access.

The indicators are grouped into three key sub-indexes: communications and institutional infrastructure scores, web content and web use scores and political, economic and social impact scores.

Sweden leads the rankings, followed by the U.S. and the U.K. Canada ranks 4th overall.

The web has the highest social impact in Canada, where it actually leads globally. Social impact includes things like the use of social networks and the use of the web to disseminate public health information.

Canada is rated lower when it comes to political and economic impact, however, and drops completely out of the top ten when it comes to infrastructure, due to 'relatively slow' internet speeds and low cell phone subscriptions per capita.

According to the Index, there are now about 3.4 billion internet users around the world, but the distribution is very uneven; over 60% per cent of the world's population doesn't have internet access. One of the foundation's goals was to draw attention to the web's ability to improve lives.

"We want to take this issue about whether or not people are a part of the information society," said Tim Berners-Lee in a statement, "and help increase awareness that it's as important as access to water and vaccinations - it's not a secondary issue."

Yemen is ranked last of the 61 countries, while Zimbabwe is second-last.

What do you think? Has the internet improved your life? How important is it to your daily routine? What about the negative aspects?