Google Says It Needs 300 Years

Google wants to "index" all the information in the world. How long will it take?

The following quotes were taken from an 8 October 2005 posting to CNET News.com.

   "We did a math exercise and the answer was 300 years," 
    Schmidt said in response to an audience question asking 
    for a projection of how long the company's mission will 
    take. "The answer is it's going to be a very long time."

   "Of the approximately 5 million terabytes of information 
    out in the world, only about 170 terabytes have been indexed, 
    he said earlier during his speech."

CNET News.com:: Google ETA? 300 years to index the world's info

SI Prefixes

	109  is giga-
	1012 is tera-
	1015 is peta-
	1018 is exa-
	1021 is zetta-
	1024 is yotta-

	SI prefixes to American names
	-----------------------------
	1 gigi-byte is 1 billion (1,000,000,000) bytes
	1 tera-byte is 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) bytes
	1 peta-byte is 1 quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) bytes

Exercises

1. 1 exa-byte  is 1 quintillion (________________________________) bytes
   

2. 1 zetta-byte is 1 sextillion (________________________________) bytes
   

3. 1 yotta-byte is 1 __________ (________________________________) bytes
   

4. Record 5 million terabytes as a whole number.

UNC.edu:: Names for Large Numbers

Creator: Gerald D. Thurman [gdt@deru.com]
Created: 15 October 2005