Google will take 2461 years to index a ‘GOOGOL’ web pages

Google will take between 684 to 2461 years to actually index a “GOOGOL” webpages!

Analysis says to index 1 Googol web pages, Google would take a minimum of 684 years and maximum of around 2461 years indicating it will not happen in our lifetime? But will Google even exist as a company and care about indexing the web pages till that time?

Have you ever wondered, what does “Google” actually mean? Well, Google originally got its name from a mathematical word “Googol” and as per the estimates given by Statistic Brain, Google had already indexed 67 Billion web pages till 2014.

Now, 1 googol means 1 followed by 100 zeros. That means “1 Googol” would resemble:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000.

This surely is a very big number and usually it is denoted as follows:

Google has indexed 67,000,000,000; so the question here is till when will Google actually index ‘one Googol’ webpages?

Calculating the growth rate of Google’s indexing:

This seems to be quite interesting and involves lots of mathematical equations!

William Harris at the TNW News, took the help of Statistic Brain and Wonder and finally considered the data given by Statistic Brain because according to Wonder till date there is no official count or any statistics of the actual number of pages indexed by Google.

By using the below formula, Harris was able to find the average growth rate of Google’s indexing from 2008 till 2014. The calculations showed that Google can continue at a 35 percent growth rate for a very long time.

Harris, says he also checked the lowest rate of growth to have a more realistic analysis. According to the data the slowest indexing growth rate which Google saw was between 2011 and 2012. The below calculations indicated that the slowest growth rate would be somewhere around 8.7 percent.

50,000,000,000 / 46,000,000,000 = 4,000,000,000

4,000,000,000 / 46,000,000,000 = 0.08695652

Now the actual calculation which would tell us when would Google actually index a “Googol” web pages: 

Based on the assumption that Google would continue indexing at a growth rate of 35 percent, Harris calculated the total number of years required to reach the “1 Googol” level.

Here “y” is the unknown variable and this formula needs to be divided by 67 Billion on both the sides. Now, the formula would appear like this:

Next, by using “logarithms”, Harris tried to solve this mathematical equation:

We need to get the value of “y” so divide both sides by log (1.35) which would give us:

In the above formula 1.4925373e, means 1.4925373×10^89 where “e” is an exponent. In other words it is as good as:

149,253,730,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

We still need to figure out what “y” is! For that we need to figure out the log values of 1.4925373e+89 and 1.35. 

It was found that log(1.4925373e+89) is equal to 89.1739251934 and log(1.35) is equal to 0.13033376849.

Thus the equation would resemble somewhat like this:

Using Google, Harris solved this equation and ultimately landed on the value of “y”,

Rounding it off, shows that y=684.

In other words, Google would take 684 years more to index one googol web pages at the growth rate of 35 percent.

Calculating it from the end of 2014, it indicates that the earliest we can see Google achieving its mark of indexing a googol web page would be calendar year 2698! which means definitely not in our life time!

Harris wanted this to be a perfect calculation and according to him, with the ever growing technology it might be difficult for Google to maintain the growth rate of indexing the web pages.

Hence, he even calculated the years required to achieve a googol indexing at the lowest growth rate of 8.7 percent.

Here, the formulae would be same with the only difference it would have to be started with 1.087 instead of 1.35 and thus Harris began his calculations all over again using this equation:

All the steps would be same except that the final calculations would involve checking for log(1.087) which equals to (0.03622954408).

Thus final answer was :

Rounding off the numbers, y=2461. 

This indicated that with the lowest growth rate of 8.7 percent, Google would take at least 2461 years more to index one googol web pages!

Calculating it from the end of 2014, the earliest we can see Google achieving its mark of indexing a googol web page would be calendar year 4476.

Year 4476 also will be  America’s 2700th Anniversary, or its Vigiseptacentennial (a latin name given by William Harris).

Harris has even given an explanation as to why he suggested the name Vigiseptacentennial:

“Vigi- is from the prefix vigint- Latin for 20, septa- is the Latin prefix we use for 7, and centennial is the word we use for 100 (again from Latin to keep it all consistent).”

Answers to certain hypothetical questions:

All the mathematics indicated that in simple words, in our life time we will never be able to see Google meeting its bench mark of indexing one googol web pages, then be it at the growth rate of 35 or 8.7 percent.

Considering a hypothetical scenario that Google continues to index the web pages at the rate of 35 percent growth rate, then Harris feels that someone might have certain doubts and queries.

So he has tried to give out certain hypothetical questions along with the answers based on his knowledge:

• Q: Foremost query would be, will Google continue to exist after 2461 years?
• A: Harris writes, according to Business Insider, one of the world’s oldest businesses has been recorded to have been established in 705 A.D. In a normal scenario any business would be seen working for around 40-50 years. There is no mention of any business which has been continued for 2461 years; however there might be a chance it would work, who knows?
• Q: Most important query: If suppose Google continues existing for next 2461 years, then will it continue indexing the web pages even at that time?
• A: Google had initially started its business as a search engine. However, now it has grown itself into various other products including the automated cars, Glasses, Androids and many more to come in the near future. So, there are chances that Google might get the process of indexing done entirely by automation or employ some A.I to get this work done, you never know with all the advanced technology Google might just continue its initial project of indexing!
• Q: Why was the rate of index was not depreciated?
• A: Harris explains that it is pretty difficult to determine this right now. One does not know if the Web would ever grow to a googol web pages and suppose in the mean time the computing gets so advanced with the introduction of quantum computers then it could be possible for Google to index much faster. Considering all these fact would have made it too complicated and since Harris preferred to keep it much simple he did not consider “depreciating the rate of index”.

Readers, what do you all think, what will the Internet look like in the calendar year 2698 or 4476? Will Google still exist?

Resource : William Harris on The Next Web.