How the web
learned to speak.
A record of which languages — major websites chose to speak — and which ones they quietly stopped speaking. Every entry, addition, and retreat pulled from a single tracking sheet and stamped into this ledger.
Eighteen years of new languages, one year at a time.
Each bar year is the number of newly-added languages that trace back to a dated entry in the sheet. Undated “always supported” languages aren’t counted here — only confirmed rollouts. Hover the line to read a given year.
The most-adopted languages on the corporate web.
Ranked by how many of the tracked companies support each language today. Unsurprisingly, the usual trade languages dominate — but the tail is longer than you’d expect.
Every company, sized by how many languages it speaks.
Each circle is one company; its area is its total language count — including the sheet’s own reported totals for sites like Wikipedia, Google, and JW.org, which speak far more languages than the tracked column list can itemize individually. Circles rimmed red have dropped at least one language along the way. Click any circle to open its full passport.
Where localization went into reverse.
Companies that once supported a language and later withdrew it, identified from the sheet’s own cancellation marks. Sorted by how many languages were dropped.
Look up any company in the ledger.
Search by name, or sort the full directory by language count.
Free preview — showing the first 12 matches. Subscribe to search all 150 companies.