Certainly, it seems Google is well on course for the multilingual web:

Google leaps language barrier with translator phone

"It's also important to note that a site must work well in one language before it is translated into others. The "Semantic Web" can result in Babel in any tongue. If seekers can't find in their primary language what they want, how can they find related information, displayed in another language? Frustrations would have them climbing – or rather, falling from – the Tower of Babel."

Social search to the rescue

knowing which one of your "trusted" native language speaking friends viewed what results (and perhaps even voted, rated and commented) related to a search string would assist GREATLY in sifting through the pile of unrelated results.

Authentication rules in this instance IMHO - what social networks do most of your friends actively participate in? gmail or facebook connect? What happened to OpenID again?

"The semantics of the same language in different regions may be different. It is better to develop “resource bundles," designed in such a way that users can dynamically switch languages based on a selection from a main site or landing page."

Simply Awesome..

"Only commenting and project management functions are likely to be in the local language."

How difficult would it be to create a syntax interpreter? or is there one that already exists?

It seems to me, though, that English has become even more pervasive since the dawn of the Internet.

Thankfully, it's my first language, but "The Death of Distance" (thank you Frances Cairncross, one of the 5 smartest women in the world, in my opinion) has turned English into the default language of the Internet.

That's North America thinking, I realize, where Spanish, French, and Portuguese seem like the only other languages.  Still, it seems returns diminish greatly when veering too far into other languages, especially when there are so many online translation services already to help users.

"And if the Chinese have allowed its citizens to view your product or service online and pay for it in a practical manner."

Good point.  A language needs big numbers, money in the bank, some way to pay, and a willingness to spend online.  That's English. 

If you're bored, check out Project Wonderful.  They have something like Google's "Ad Planner" where you can look at the language breakdown of the sites you advertise on.  Using their system you can set up a query: "only run ads on sites with at least 85% English-speaking traffic."  This is important because you might otherwise break a threshold that could get you banned from xyz program.  

KE5HCE  

"Chinese to encourage citizens to log into English speaking websites, for maybe some public relations reasons. ( is my guess.)"

Good guess.  

Google this: 

Chinese "50 cent army"

 Because of #1, most affiliate programs, ad programs (such as Google Adsense) strictly DO NOT ALLOW non-English websites.

The game changer would be if other big portals emerge "in another" language to compete with the "big English" ones (Google being the first) and propose their own "compelling" model. But for that, the whole world's history has to be written again.   

While it's not surprising that China, and Chinese,as the world's most predominent language would rank near the top in internet use among certain surveys, I think the practicality of the matter is that whether that's useful or not depends on the objective of the individual web sites and services.

Catering to Chinese languge viewers may have some usefulness if you have a product or service that the everyday Chinese person can buy or use. And if the Chinese have allowed its citizens to view your product or service online and pay for it in a practical manner.

At this point I don't think much money can be made from the Chinese internet viewers. When I look at my stats for viewers of my live enterainment webcam I get viewers pretty much spread out all over the world, with of course mainly English speaking viewers from the U.S,  and Britain. But there are a large percentage also on Spanish and Portuguese speakers and surprisingly, a bit smaller percentage from Arabic speaking countries. The only time I logged viewers from China was during the Olympics when it almost seemed there was some governrment program by the Chinese to encourage citizens to log into English speaking websites, for maybe some public relations reasons. ( is my guess.) After the Olympics, I've not seen anymore Chinese vistitors although I do have many from Korea and Japan.

At this point in time, I don't think China will be a factor for consideration by any business trying to make some money from our Chinese viewers.

No wonder so many more sites that I reach from search results have those (to me) funny looking characters...

It does make a lot of sense that Chinese would overtake English in this way. For those of us who grew up thinking the good old USA was the dominant nation on the planet and would forever remain so, it's a real eye-opener. I've been aware for years that much of that old believe was delusional, but things like the global use of English as a 'lingua franca' allowed me to keep the blinders on.

Excellent article.

I looked into translating my sites and concluded it's definitely not worth the effort.  

1.  English-speakers spend MOST of the money online.  Non-English spend is nearly  insignificant.

2.  Because of #1, most affiliate programs, ad programs (such as Google Adsense) strictly DO NOT ALLOW non-English websites.  Translating your website to other languages is a good way to get BANNED.