The story isn't that Google has found 1,000,000,000,000 unique URLs on the Web. It's that there are many times more that Google's engineers haven't bothered to chase after. Always remember that when you search Google, you're not searching the actual Internet. You're searching a bunch of archives at Google with data plucked from the Internet — such as the Google News database, which I've been told their lawyers forbade from including either Drudge Report or Valleywag. That makes Google News the world's largest searchable repository of stale, second-hand rumors and barely rewritten press releases. I'm sure their other archives are just as comprehensive.

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