> My favorite search service - Lycos, whose size seems representative of the
> size of
> the Web, reported 11.6 million documents 3 weeks ago, 13.9 million one week
ago,
> and 16.4 million today. Not bad - 2.5 million new documents in one week!
> - Besides hypertext documents, this number includes HTMLized e-mail archives,
> graphics put on the Web, etc.
> This is already getting close to the number of documents people may create
> in a week.
> Not quite close yet, but a couple more years of such growth, and the
> majority of things
> people may want to share will be globally accessible. Then this growth will
> probably
> slow down a bit, but should speed up again when the majority of information
> sources
> starts coming from non-human agents...
Here's some interesting info on the scope of the Lycos enterprise.
It's amazing to me how few people in the media (newspapers, etc.) realize
the importance played by search engines, of which Lycos is the best. All
the attention goes to the Microsoft/Netscape bout; but it's Lycos, Yahoo,
etc. that really matter for getting folks to visit your page.
Anyway, the info on the page listed below is taken from a talk given
in Texas by folks from Lycos:
HTTP://CHARON.SFSU.EDU/LYCOS.HTML