At the US Association of National Advertiser's annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Google's Eric Schmidt said that "We did a math exercise and the answer was 300 years". "The answer is it's going to be a very long time".
Google right now claims they have 170 terabytes indexed so far, and did not discuss how they came up with the 300 year number. One can only speculate what their goal of indexing is: are they trying to index all the information available today in 2005, or are they including information to index today in addition to what will be added tomorrow.
One has to wonder, however, if all this indexing is good. I have mentioned in columns past about "Googlebombing" where people plant false information into the database to direct people in false directions to make a political statement (remember searching for "miserable failure" and being sent to George Bush's website, where the words do not exist). Google has professed a policy to NOT correct these obvious re-directions, so I would have to conclude that the database has integrity issues.
We have also seen Google Earth, and all those nice pictures from space. Current pictures of defense installations and other sensitive areas can be inviting to terrorist threats. It also could cause a privacy issue for private property. As resolution technology increases, are we going to reach a point that we can Google a picture of someone's house overhead, and see them sunbathing?
When I think of Google, I see a company out of control, exposing things to the public that perhaps should be thought about before going online. I also think of Garbage's theme song to "The World is Not Enough". The Lyrics are here: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/g/garbage/57930.html go think about it and come up with your own conclusion.
Catch you next time. :)
