There’s a growing digital divide, and it’s not between the rich and poor, or connected and disconnected (though they exist too, and are perhaps more serious), but a balkanisation of the Internet into regionally available services.

Once upon a time, the Internet was going to transcend national boundaries, but today instead the Internet is a highly fragmented place, with companies forced into offering services limited by legal rules and borders, not customer demand or technical ability.

The perfect example of this is the Amazon navigation bar in the USA, now heavily into digital services, as highlighted by Ryan Spoon – which now lists digitial services in the most important positions, rather than books or CDs. Unlimited Instant Videos, Cloud Player, Cloud Drive, Kindle, Android App Store, Digital Games, and Audible Audiobooks are now the major links for Amazon USA. Out of that list, Amazon UK sells only two of those services, the Amazon Kindle, and Audible Audiobooks (which is hidden under the books, then Audiobooks, then you follow a banner link to Audible).

The difference is incredible, and Amazon are not the only organisation suffering from these issues of legality and licencing, the only question now is will the digital borders get stronger or weaker, and will European and other countries continue to miss out on huge ranges of digital services, due to the complexity of cross-border Internet businesses?