Self-taught artist Martin Vargic has created the first-ever map of the Internet, creating a magnificent layout of the digital world.
Hailing from Slovakia, Vargic embarked on this journey back in 2014, when he released the first version of this map. In 2021, the map saw a major update, and in 2024, there was yet another refresh to capture the internet as we know it today. He created a classic style map, plotting thousands of websites as lands and national borders of various sizes depending on the traffic they receive.
The map of the Internet captures the imagination
Imagine sailing the Bandwidth Ocean after leaving the vast nation of Amazon. You look at your map to see what direction you need to go in order to reach the News continent. After consulting the map, you tell your crew to head east as you plan to head through Tabloid Strait and into the nation of CNN.
With Vargic’s incredible map, one can easily imagine surfing the web as an adventure across massive oceans or riding through several nations to reach one’s destination. Except in reality, all that happens in just a couple of milliseconds. It is an astonishing feat of creativity to turn what the average person sees as typing a URL and hitting enter into a world in which anyone can visualize themselves living in.
The map has an intriguing and detailed layout that takes a couple of pointers from the real-world map. For example, the infamous Dark Web can be found on the south end of the map where Antarctica would be, a nice nod to the mysterious place few ever dare to visit.
Google and YouTube take up a massive chunk of land in the West, creating a continent similar to that of North America. The large nations bordering each other reference both Google’s acquisition of the popular video website and the fact that the pair are among the most frequently visited websites in the world. Smaller nations like Netflix and other streaming sites sit nearby on the peninsula of the continent.
In the East, the continent of Shopping websites holds a similar place as Europe does in our world. The large nation of Amazon sits on the west, and several small nations of other popular shopping sites such Nike, Zara, and Ikea reside nearby.
The map took the map-obsessed Vargic about a year to create. It required long hours of research on his part, along with many hours spent figuring out the lay of the land.
“Color schemes of websites are based on the dominant colors of their user interface or logo,” said Vargic. “To add further detail and provide deeper insight, many features and services provided by these websites, their sections and content categories, as well as distinct content creators, are labeled as cities and towns.”