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The internet is growing... but Google isn't?

Someone over at http://www.anderoid.com/~seander/archives/000111.html noticed a very interesting trend:

Google's index should be growing exponentially to keep up with the growing size of the web.  Google's main page indicates that it searches 4,285,199,774 web pages, and this number has remained the same for the last year and seven months, since around February 8-14, 2003

and they also have a guessplanation for it:

I bet they are suffering from a 4-byte limit with their URL identifiers.  With 4 bytes, which is the natural word-size for the inexpensive ia32/x86-compatible processors they are using, they can store 32 bits, and that means 232 different values, or 4,294,967,296.

Interesting..

Published Friday, September 24, 2004 6:22 PM by Addys
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Comments

# re: The internet is growing... but Google isn't?

Saturday, September 25, 2004 12:23 AM by Richard Tallent
Perhaps the limit is not with their database, but with the counter itself?

# re: The internet is growing... but Google isn't?

Tuesday, September 28, 2004 4:15 PM by Eric Newton
heh, a silent overflow error, i love developer humor <g>

# Santomania The internet is growing but Google isn t | Paid Surveys

# Santomania The internet is growing but Google isn t | Portable Greenhouse

# Santomania The internet is growing but Google isn t | Portable Greenhouse

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