Report: The Internet Is, Like, Really Big Now

For those who need further proof that this Internet thing is getting huge, a study released today found that there are now more than 2 billion pages on the Internet.

Using a complex statistical model of the entire Net, a company called Cyveillance today unveiled its finding that there are some 2.1 billion "unique, publicly available pages available on the Internet."

And that number is growing to the tune of 7 million pages a day, according to the Cyveillance "Sizing the Internet" report, which further indicates that the number of pages on the Internet will double by 2001.

There is a "huge and vast amount" of data available online, Cyveillance Chief Technology Officer Wolfgang Tolle said today.

To determine the size of the Net, Cyveillance used its proprietary artificial intelligence software (called "NetSapien") to collect and analyze more than 350 million hyperlinks over about a four-month period.

Drawing from that huge sample, Cyveillance was able to create a continuous working model of the entire Internet, Tolle said.

While the company has not yet fully explored the uses of the model, Tolle said future studies based on the technology could examine the relative size of various e-commerce sectors or could offer a snapshot of Internet development by geographic region.

Cyveillance markets itself as a provider of Internet business intelligence and uses its NetSapien to monitor Internet activity for its clients.

More information about the study is available on the Cyveillance Web site at http://www.cyveillance.com.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.