Information growth

Filed under:hznp.com — anonym @ January 9, 2009 edit
  • At what rate does information on the internet grow? What are predictions for the future? Berkley university have done some research into this, so they might be a good place to start.


  • Who is answering this question at the moment?


  • Will_Fawcett -- A very interesting question which has generated enormous debate. After a period of explosive growth between 1995-2000, there are those who argue that growth of "the Internet," defined as PUBLIC web page sites, has slowed to zero. In the O'Neill/Lavoie/Bennett's article in D-Lib Magazine in April, 2003, they actually argue that the Internet may have shrunk between 2001-2002: D-Lib Magazine "Trends in the Evolution of the Public Web" (April, 2003) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april03/lavoie/04lavoie.html The three authors work for the Online Computer Library Center, which began to size the Internet in 1997. They estimated that by June, 2002 there were 3,080,000 websites in the "public" web or 35% of the total of 1.4 billion pages. They use estimates from Shapiro and Varian in their book "Information Rules" A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy" to estimated that it's the equivalent of about 1.5 million books -- or a fraction of a good university library. "Information Rules" (Shapiro & Varian) http://www.inforules.com/ Indeed Berkeley has some of the best information, particularly the study "How Much Information?" which did a 2000 and 2003 study, indicates that the web is growing dramatically -- in contrast to the D-Lib article. The interesting aspect of the Berkeley study is that it also attempts to measure the TOTAL amount of information available -- including paper: Berkeley School of Information Management Systems http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/internet.htm In their 2000 study, the estimates were: Public web: 14-28 terabytes Total web including "deep web": 25-50 terabytes Average web site: 441 pages Average page size: 10K-20K bytes In the 2003 study, the estimates are far higher for both the public web and private web, probably because better statistical sampling techniques were used AND continued growth of information available via the web: Public web: 167 terabytes Total web including "deep web": 66,800-91,850 terabytes Here are links to the 2 studies: UCal Berkeley "How Much Information?" (2000) http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/ UCal Berkeley "How Much Information?" (2003) http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/internet.htm BrightPlanet did the core work on the "deep web" and its size, which put the remote portion of the web at 400-550 times larger than the public web. The "deep web" includes all of the pages that are not searchable, including public databases with a CGI interface; private Internet pages run by companies; proprietary databases like Lexis/Nexis or Thomson Gale databases; and pages that block search robots for various reasons: DeepPlanet "Deep Web White Paper," (Bergman, July 2001) http://www.brightplanet.com/technology/deepweb.asp It's pretty clear that the growth -- and growth by category -- is pretty dramatic. Only new domain registrations show a slowdown, mentioned in the D-Lib article. But intranets within corporations are growing rapidly, with many corporations going to electronic documentation. Yet we may never have good estimates of growth because early measures missed so many areas. And search engines are struggling to penetrate these recesses of the Internet in order to retain their value as the heartbeat (or perhaps the "brains" is more accurate) of the Internet. Eighteen months ago Google estimated that it reached about half of the 4 billion pages on the Internet. A recent Google press release now claims about 4.28 billion web pages (with reach into images and message boards expanding the total index to 6 billion items): Google, Inc. "Google Achieves Search Milestone," (Feb. 17, 2004) ://www.google.com/press/pressrel/6billion.html Google search strategy: "size of the Internet" "limits of the Internet" Best regards, Omnivorous-GA


  • how many MB is a terabyte?


  • Will_Fawcett -- A terabyte is 1 million megabytes. And a megabyte, of course, is 1 million bytes. It's probably easier to start using exponential figures because the masses of data are growing so rapidly: UC Berkeley "Data Powers of Ten" (2000) http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/datapowers.html Best regards, Omnivorous-GA







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