What is the new dominant language of the internet?

According to Nicholas Ostler in The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel  (2010):

The online communities that use languages other than English have grown meteorically in the first decade of the twenty-first century. From 2000 to 2009, the fastest growing languages on the Net (in numbers of users) were Arabic (twentyfold), Chinese (twelvefold), Portuguese (ninefold), Spanish (sevenfold), and French (sixfold). (pp. 263-264)

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And according to the infographic below, Chinese will become the dominant internet language in five years. But I am not entirely convinced, are you? 

Click image to enlarge.

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(Thank you, Alvin, for drawing my attention to this. The image is from Gizdomo via. The Next Web.) 

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How will the world respond to the decline of English?

Nicholas Ostler answers in The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel  (2010):

The decline of English, when it begins, will not seem of great moment.

International English is a lingua franca, and by its nature, a lingua franca is a language of convenience. When it ceases to be convenient---however widespread it has been---it will be dropped, without ceremony, and with little emotion. People will just not get around learning it, not see the point, be glad to escape a previously compulsory subject at school. Only those who have a more intimate relation to it, its native speakers, may feel a sense of loss---much as French people do today when their language is passed over, or accorded no special respect. And those who are conscious of having made a serious investment to learn the language---having misread the signs of change afoot in global communication---may also feel cheated, even disappointed, when others seem to be excused from having to know it. But the world as a whole will shrug and go on transacting its business in whatever language, or combination of languages, next seems useful. (xv)

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Will Chinese be used as a lingua-franca?

Nicholas Ostler answers in The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel  (2010):

Chinese, like all the great languages of the modern world excepting English and French, remains very much a localized language in eastern and southeastern Asia, even if it is set to be the language of the world's dominant economic power, and with a truly vast number of speakers to boot. It may well increase its currency in some parts of the world (notably Africa), but the current political structure of the world system makes it unlikely that Chinese will get the chance to seed itself as the common language in new communities around the world that might use it as a lingua-franca. (283)

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