{"id":1094,"date":"2014-12-01T14:13:11","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T19:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1094"},"modified":"2014-12-03T11:56:27","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T16:56:27","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-internet-in-a-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1094\/retro-scan-of-the-week-internet-in-a-box","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Google in a Box"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/microforum_internet_connection_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/microforum_internet_connection_small.jpg\" alt=\"Microforum Internet Connection advertisement - 1996\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>&#8220;The Most Comprehensive Directory of Internet Sites Ever Produced&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>18 years ago, a fairly complete index of the entire Internet &#8212; circa 1995 &#8212; could fit on a single CD-ROM &#8212; about 20,000 sites, as the box for Microforum&#8217;s Internet Connection &#8217;96 says. <em>[<strong>Update<\/strong>: See comments below for a discussion on the number of websites in 1995 and 1996]<\/em>  I ran a website back then, and the Web did indeed feel that small.  FTP sites were still a big deal in those days, so that number may include them as well.<\/p>\n<p>Today, some estimates say that the Web alone consists of over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.internetlivestats.com\/total-number-of-websites\/\" target=\"_blank\">one billion websites<\/a>.  Consider storing a simple list of one billion websites URLs.  If each URL was about 25 characters long (I&#8217;m just making this up as an example), it would take around 25 gigabytes to store the list alone (or about 39 CDs worth).  Google stores that list <em>and<\/em> copies of individual websites for caching.  Needless to say, that takes quite a bit more storage room.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s amusing to think back to a time when you might actually buy a professionally mastered and duplicated CD-ROM containing web addresses, many of which were potentially obsolete by the time the disc landed in your hands (I just used Yahoo&#8217;s web directory).  Now we have Google.  Imagine that: using the Internet to index itself.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Internet World &#8211; February 1996, p.117]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> What year did you create your first website?<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<br \/>\n<strong>See Also: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1024\/retro-scan-of-the-week-the-internet-in-a-box\" target=\"_blank\">Internet In a Box<\/a> (RSOTW, 2014)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The Most Comprehensive Directory of Internet Sites Ever Produced&#8221; 18 years ago, a fairly complete index of the entire Internet &#8212; circa 1995 &#8212; could fit on a single CD-ROM &#8212; about 20,000 sites, as the box for Microforum&#8217;s Internet Connection &#8217;96 says. [Update: See comments below for a discussion on the number of websites [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,35,27,26,10],"tags":[213,150,551,969,118,567,966,60,968,970,967],"class_list":["post-1094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-internet-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers","tag-213","tag-advertisement","tag-cd-rom","tag-google","tag-internet","tag-internet-world","tag-microforum","tag-retro-scan","tag-web-directory","tag-yahoo","tag-yellow-pages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}