With the rapid development of the Internet,the information keeps explosive growth.It is clear that understanding the characteristics of the Internet information is important to,for example,fast acquisition of the information from the Internet.A survey on the development of the characteristics of the Internet information is presented in this paper.Firstly,the characteristic of the carrier of the Internet information is discussed.Secondly,the characteristics of the Internet information in terms of time evolution,information scale,information content,and types of information files,are analyzed and summarized.Finally,the possible application of the characteristics of the Internet information is discussed.