Internet 2025: Bigger, more fragile than ever and fundamentally rewired by AI (www.zdnet.com)

In 2025, the internet experienced significant growth, with global traffic increasing by nearly 20% driven largely by bots and AI crawlers rather than human users, according to Cloudflare's report. This rise in non-human activity is noteworthy, as automated systems like Googlebot are now responsible for a substantial portion of web traffic, surpassing other crawlers like OpenAI's GPTBot. Furthermore, the accessibility of the internet has shifted towards mobile devices, with smartphones accounting for 43% of traffic, while satellite internet services, particularly Starlink, saw their traffic more than double in the same year, enhancing connectivity in rural and underserved areas. However, this growth has made the internet more fragile and susceptible to attacks. Cloudflare reported a rise in malicious activities, with approximately 6% of global traffic requiring mitigation due to DDoS campaigns and automated abuses. The frequency and scale of these attacks, particularly from botnets like Aisuru, pose significant challenges, disrupting service even for unaffected users. Compounding this fragility are issues such as government-imposed internet shutdowns and infrastructure failures that led to major outages across important services, underscoring the increasingly centralized and vulnerable nature of the modern internet.