BBC News has a very cool interactive chart up, showing how the Internet grew from 1998 to 2008 in various parts of the world.

In 1998, the only countries with significant Internet usage were the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden. Of course, I remember using the Internet in Croatia every day back then, but it’s true: For most people, it was “this new thing” and it didn’t play a very important part of our everyday lives.

Moving the slider below the charts forward into future, you can see how quickly western Europe adopted the Internet, with more than 31% of people online in most European countries by 2005. In Africa, however, the numbers are dismal, even today. Check out the interactive chart over at the BBC News website.