Royal supporters wave flags and wear masks depicting Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton, along the procession route in London April 29, 2011.Reuters/Reuters
Even though the royal wedding was everywhere on Friday, the Internet has spoken - and apparently while the world loves news about a prince marrying his princess, the world loves sports even more.
At its height, global Internet traffic saw just less than 5.4-million page views a minute at about 8:30 a.m. ET on news-focused websites, according to Akamai, an Internet service provider and traffic monitor.
That makes the royal wedding the sixth biggest event in the history of the Internet.
The numbers were significantly less than the top event, when World Cup qualifying matches and the longest match ever at Wimbledon happened at the same time and sparked 10.3-million page views a minute in the summer of 2010.
The second, third and fourth spots are occupied with by games, while the No. 5 spot is held by the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections, which saw a peak of 5.6-million page views a minute in November of that year.
At sixth spot, the royal wedding drove Internet traffic more than other recent major events, including the night Barack Obama was elected president, coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and this year's Super Bowl.
And yes, with more people taking to the Internet to get their news than in years past, making such comparisons is less than scientific, Jeff Young, a spokesman for Akamai told CNN.
"Technology has come a long way since then," he said.
Indeed, the huge number of page views regarding the wedding are proof of the role the Internet now plays in our lives, Mr. Young added.
"This is an example of just how important the Internet and connected devices have become to how people experience something like this. It wasn't the fact that people were at the office in front of their computers - and yet still a huge number of folks have gone online to experience this event. That shows where we've moved as a society."
Dave McGinn