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How Big Is the Internet?

Eric Schmidt knows the answer

By Alina Plesu, Technology and Science Editor

10th of October 2005, 12:01 GMT

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It's a well-known fact that the search engines are indexing only a small part of the entire Internet content.

But what is the Internet's exact size, especially since the 2005 boom has added 17 million new sites?

In his speech at the annual conference
of the National Advertisers Association, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, said that, from the data recorded by the search engine, it seems that, at this specific moment, the Internet is made up of 5 million terabytes.

Even Google, which is considered currently the best search engine ever, has succeeded to index only 170 terabytes up until now, Schmidt said.

Google has been indexing information for 7 years, and if you want to have an idea on how fast this process is, it seems that, in order to index the 5 million terabytes of data, the search engine would need 300 years. And this would be valid only if nobody posted new content on the Internet...

It would be interesting to find out how much are the other search engines indexing compared to Google, so we can have a complete image of what is currently accessible.
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User opinions:


Comment #1 by: Robert Wooller on 22 Mar 2008, 23:26 GMT reply to this comment

Google is trying to take over the internet and may already have done. Thanks for the article.


Comment #2 by: Tim Gingell on 11 Jan 2009, 21:13 GMT reply to this comment

170 terabytes - isn't that the storage capacity of 200 hard drives in a modern computer?


Comment #3 by: Steve on 04 Mar 2009, 19:54 GMT reply to this comment

Yes, but that's a definite mistake. The author meant 170 MILLION TB, which is equivalent to about 680,000,000 computers (with an average HD capactiy of 250 GB of storage).

Comment #3.1 by: bob on 24 Apr 2009, 19:34 GMT

170 million tb would be more than the estimated size of the internet...


Comment #4 by: Jesus on 26 May 2009, 15:18 GMT reply to this comment

Steve you are retarded.

170 million TB > 5 million TB. Therefore google would have the index of the 5 million TB, with a bit of space left over as well.

Please dont put stupid comments on as i think the author knew what he put on.

Thanks


Comment #5 by: TOrrentz on 02 Jun 2009, 19:28 GMT reply to this comment

Steve is actually more correct than this article.
The internet is much bigger than 5 million terabytes, since torrents take around 100 million terabytes alone


Comment #6 by: God on 03 Jun 2009, 00:16 GMT reply to this comment

Jesus...

How many times have I told you not to call my creations retarded? I created them in a way that makes me feel more superior. I know... how could someone like me “sculptor” of the world as we know it feel inferior to anyone else!

Well my psychologist says that I have a mental issue that needs addressing.

Anyhow, my point is Jesus, I created you as a retarded human too don't feel special because you self-proclaimed yourself as my son...

Many people have followed the same pointless path.


Comment #7 by: Bladtman242 on 03 Jun 2009, 08:55 GMT reply to this comment

Guys. Remember that this article is from 2005, and as such is useless today.
(no offence to the author, but this kind of stuff changes all the time, so an article from 05 is kinda outdated in 09


Comment #8 by: Bone on 02 Jul 2009, 17:06 GMT reply to this comment

Bladtman242

Heh, that can be said about pretty much ANY article about anything. 4 years is a long time, but in technology 4 years is an eternity. I'd guess this article was pretty outdated about 2-3 months after it was published.

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