Of the 100 most visited websites in the world as tracked by Netcraft.com, all but six are owned by American companies or their European subsidiaries. Google and its offshoots account for 15 of the top 20, and with 46 among the top 100. The great majority of the top sites are in English, and other than one Russian site (#99), the French sports sites L’Equipe (#94) and French newspaper Le Monde (#79), all non-English language sites are individual offshoots of either Google, Facebook, Yahoo, MySpace, Microsoft, Newscorp or Ebay. The BBC’s site (# 26), is the lone English-language standout.

With Murdoch’s NewsCorp headquartered in Britain, it’s the only non-American player in the game, though its main web presence is based primarily on American companies it acquired.