In choosing a technology for internet applications where the number of users may scale over time, which one should we consider: Java or Python? What are the considerations in choosing one and not the other? If speed and scalability is our main criteria, which one should we use?

We have looked around and it seems that there are more websites that use Python [i.e : Quora, digg, reddit, bitbucket and disqus] than Java. Based on that, can we say that Python is more suitable for internet applications where speed and scalability is the main criteria?

However we have browsed around and found some comments saying that Java is actually faster than Python.

Thank you for your insights.