07-24-2004, 11:48 AM
Quote:I'm pretty sure that search engines have a huge database of websites. The search itself isn't conducted over the entire internet, but only through the catalogued (sic?) websites in storage. If this is true, then how do websites get into the database in the first place? If this whole database thing isn't the way it works, and the serach engine is actually scanning the entire intarweb, how does it work? Does it jump from IP to IP? Wha...
Yes, the search engine scans (more or less) the entire web - in Google's case. I don't know all the exact details, but it includes following links on scanned webpages to scan more webpages, for example.
There are other search engines that are catalogue-based, though, i.e. edited by humans. Google used to be both, and I think they still are. They have both a human-edited catalogue and a bot-created database.
On the original topic: I am a lot more optimistic than the other posters in this thread seem to be. For me, the Internet is still very very useful, both as an access to information and as a medium for social interaction. And I can't see that changing anytime soon. In fact, I think the usefulness is increasing, for example with projects like Wikipedia.
I don't share the impression that the garbage is growing so much faster than the useful information. If it is, then it is - at least for me - still easy enough to sort out all the garbage.
If the garbage grows by 100% and the quality information grows by 10% and you can easily ignore all the garbage, then in the end, the overall quality has improved by 10% ;)
I think that the really dangerous threats to the net come from other developments: Over-commercialization and government control.