Google’s mission is to make all the world’s information searchable. Eric Scmidt says that there is 5 Million terabytes of information in the world of which 170 terabytes has been indexed. He projects that it will take 300 years to index all the world’s information. Since I don’t know all the detailed calculations required in arriving to 5 Million Terabytes, I am just curious how correct this number is. Also, what is the assumption made about all the world’s information.
Is all the world’s information like BaseBall World Series in which only North American baseball teams participate? So, does the world’s information only contains written and digitized information developed in developed countries? Does it contain live information being generated by more than 6 Billion people and soon trillions of sensors? Or does it contain only information that has been abstracted for specific applications by mediators of different kind? Does this number contain all evolving and accumulated information or only condensed and abstracted information that is considered time-tasted and useful?
In fact, I have always wondered about this mission statement — All the World’s information. Maybe one requires this kind of vagueness to motivate people to be addressing ever-evolving and ever-changing goals and making sure that even when the ‘real goal’ is not achieved, one could announce the project to be successful.