"comScore has no explanation for the popularity of France Telecom, but we think it has something to do with the company's recent launch of its Orange mobile and internet service provider south of the Pyrenees."

I have quite a few Spanish friends that get hacked off when they are in the US and when they identify where they are from, people screw up thier faces trying to place the country somewhere between Bolivia and Guatemala. That's besides the fact that if they speak with an accent, people think they are Mexican.

I think you might find that either comScore are muppets as they have included Spain in the 'Latin American' market or the launch of Orange in Spain (which to your credit you identified with correct geographical info) will not have done much for South and Central American traffic.

88 per cent of Latin America's mostly-Spanish-speaking internet population, Google 87 per cent, and Yahoo! a mere 65 per cent.

ehh?

thats more than a hundred percent, and I've just finished half a bottle of vodka, sorry programming juice.

stop this now, your trying to confuse me.......

Simon, I'm not sure about your comment about muppets.

"comScore's list of the region's top ten destinations also includes two European ISPs"

They are in no way saying that Spain is part of Latin America. What they said is that one of the popular "destinations" for Latin American users happens to be a Spanish ISP.

Historical references to Latins, i.e. Italian natives and Italy's possessions which were latin speaking and those from counties colonized by Latin SPEAKING peoples (Italians and Portaguese), i.e. Latin America which was SOUTH AMERICA and NOT Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc and ESPECIALLY NOT Mexico!

Mexicans and those that are Spanish decendents or mixed are HISPANICS! As in Hispania (Spain)!! Those that are NOT Hispanic are Central America INDIANS!

The Mexicans have tried to bastardize the meaning of being Latin in an effort to soften their image in the media and slip in the US in the guise of another legitmate ethinc group.

I am 75% Italian, therefore Latin - Mexicans are NOT! Get it straight!

The article said, "comScore has no explanation for the popularity of France Telecom, but we think it has something to do with the company's recent launch of its Orange mobile and internet service provider south of the Pyrenees."

I was taking the piss. Either the reporter was asleep at the keyboard or comScore did something equally stupid and put Spain figures in their LatAm analysis. Either way there is a touch of the Henson knocking around (viz your question about muppets). Clear (or still slightly muddy)?

And for Webster Phreaky:

Sorry, you will find that most people regard Latin America to be the part of the Americas where Latinate (or Romance as they are also known as) languages are spoken. In case you were not paying attention, this is the bit below the US on the map (you know, the leeetle countries where the CIA has been overthrowing elected governments and otherwise intefering until it got distracted by the Middle East). Don't believe me, go find Latin America on a map or look up a definition.

Although you may be 75% Italian, you show 100% ignorance of the fact that Latin gave birth to a bunch of languages; including (just in case you can't work this out for yourself), Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Felicitas in inscitia.

The designation 'Latin' is more to do with the roots of the launguage people speak that your irrational - and frankly fascist - comments about Mexicans. Que te chupan tu madre, pendejo...

1) Are you stupid?

2) What on the warming Earth is Portaguese? I myself am a native speaker of a language called Portuguese, and it's much closer to Spanish than to Italian, by the way. Anyway, all of them are derived from Latin, as are Romanian, Occitan, Catalan, French, Provençal, Romansh and a bunch of other ones. So by your own definition I guess all these people are Latinos just like you, eh?

3) Sorry to break it on your ignorant self, but South America was colonized mostly by Spain. Italy did not colonize anything there (although quite a few Italian immigrants, including half of my ancestors, did move there looking for better life conditions -- but that's far from "colonizing", unless you do think the Chinese colonized America).

4) From the way you write/spell, could you get a less appropriate nickname to register on El Reg at all?

in Brazil, terra.com.br is a very popular portal... perhaps it's actually hosted by the parent company in Europe? (though that would be a huge waste of bandwidth). Or the "location" is based on ownership of the domain.

could be the France Telecom is a major owner/operator of ISPs in South America and something similar is going on there.

And BTW South America is about 50/50 Portuguese/Spanish by population... the Portuguese just ran their bit as one giant colony.

"doesn't add up to 100%" Nor will it ever - just shows any single person may use several search engines on one computer, hence, I mostly use Google but sometimes Yahoo or Ask... Gotta be careful with doing simple arithmetic on percentages.

Also: Microsoft 88 per cent, Google 87 per cent, and Yahoo! 65 per cent. MS comes shipped as the default on most PC's as it's part of the ubiquitous Windows OS. To Google or Yahoo! requires conscious effort on the part of the user. So that 87 per cent is pretty remarkable (and 1 per cent behind the leader is hardly trailing...)

Ah Webster Phreaky ... are you feeling a bit NAZI today??

While there is a dispute about Latin America, it is as a term *itself*, not because we are not a former Italian colony. In fact, there were NO italian colonies at all!!! Even if I included Portugal in that, according to you, "Brasil" would be the only Latin American country. Check your facts, dude!

The only dispute I have seen is about being called Latin America or Iberoamerican, because almost all the area was exclusively Spanish or Portugese colonies... except there were some French ones too. And Malvinas/Falklands (whoops, thats another can of worms, but I'm not Argentinian anyway ;)

Anyway, let me extend this rant on saying that while Google, Yahoo and Micro$oft portals correctly discern Latin America from the Spain dudes, some other sites default Spanish-speaking to Spain. And I HATE how they talk! They translate everything, even IT terms!!! (Imagine my face when I read about "walkers" (encaminadores) instead of "routers"...). Please, Spanish speakers != Spain. We fought them off 196 years ago!

I just thought that I would further wind up Webster Phreaky by repeating an old latin american joke:

An Argentinian is an Italian who speaks Spanish and thinks he is English.

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