Where can i get my hands on internet data, usage patterns etc?

Basically for purposes of marketing and product research we need access to data about the internet: what are people talking about, number of users in India, demographic patterns, conversations going on in the social media space, etc.

We are aware of analytic solutions like Forrester, Gartner, Gigaom, etc. Are these the only solutions available? Needless to say I am looking at something which is as cost effective as possible.

Thanks in advance.

Google has some tools that might be useful. The best part is, they're free:

• Google trends http://www.google.com/trends/
• Google trends for websites trends.google.com/websites
• Google insights for search www.google.com/insights/search/

If you're looking for conversations in social media, try www.tweetmeme.com/.
If you want platform data, try www.netcraft.com/

[Edit: I'm a "new user" so this site won't let me post more than one hyperlink. This makes it difficult to answer this kind of question. I've altered the above to include only one hyperlink. My apologies.]

You get what you pay for, at least in terms of accuracy, reliability and time invested to get the required information.

Here are my suggestions

• Prices - ebay/amazon and vertical shopping sites
• Competitors - Google/Google trends
• Demographics - Quantcast.com
• Market size - Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Conversations - FB, Yahoo Answers etc...