Monday, April 14, 2008

Deep Web

From Wikipedia:

The deep Web (or Deepnet, invisible Web or hidden Web) refers to World Wide Web content that is not part of the surface Web indexed by search engines. It is estimated that the deep Web is several orders of magnitude larger than the surface Web.

In 2000, it was estimated that the deep Web contained approximately 7,500 terabytes of data and 550 billion individual documents. Estimates, based on extrapolations from the study entitled How much information is there?, from University of California, Berkeley, show that the deep Web consists of about 91,000 terabytes. By contrast, the surface Web, which is easily reached by search engines, is only about 167 terabytes. The Library of Congress contains about 11 terabytes, for comparison…
91,000 terabytes? Good grief.

This Wikipedia entry seems a bit dated. I'm curious as to how much of the Deep Web has been surfaced since then?

I've always wondered if there was a sort of 'under-net', i.e., secret networks hiding in the periphery of the Internet. (See: Dark internet, Darknet and Sneakernet) I'd wager there are deeper, darker, more secret nets out there that few know of, (likely home to the machinations of governments, corporations, terrorists, hackers and child pornographers.) I'd also wager that Google knows a fair bit about this.

Looks like I have a new research project. If anyone out there has any info on this, please pass it on.

from roamin
via suwaowa.log

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