Will the internet ever reach saturation point?

[PeteMorris]

The google search screen hasn't changed.

 

It offers a huge additional array of services now, that are not part of the search function.

 

I still don't understand what Pete means by "saturation".

 

Well I guess in my non-technical way, I'm trying to say, will there ever come a point when the amount of data being generated

 

A) Won't be worth keeping (by anyone) because it's drivel.

B) Won't be worth keeping because of data overload.

 

I think (B) has already been addressed, but it just 'appears' to me, that each day there must be billions of extra chunks of data generated somewhere on the planet!

[Cyclone]

Yeah and do you remember askjeeves and AOL?

Just the way we search and archive information is much more sophisticated now.

 

This comment means we're talking about the search functionality...

 

We know that google does so much more today, but that's not what we're discussing.

 

I said that the search screen hadn't changed significantly. It won the search engine war, and then it leveraged it into a massive advertising business, the revenue from which has turned it into one of the biggest IT companies in the world.

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 15:42 ----------

 

Well I guess in my non-technical way, I'm trying to say, will there ever come a point when the amount of data being generated

 

A) Won't be worth keeping (by anyone) because it's drivel.

I'm sure that lots of todays data is basically drivel, but storage is cheap and data mining makes money (by targetting ads).

B) Won't be worth keeping because of data overload.

No, you can't overload the mind of a computer, storage is cheap and getting cheaper.

 

I think (B) has already been addressed, but it just 'appears' to me, that each day there must be billions of extra chunks of data generated somewhere on the planet!

 

Yes, almost certainly. But so what? If it's worth something to someone it will be stored and if it isn't it will be thrown away.

[PeteMorris]

Okay. What is the thing that he thinks could be full?

 

The internet isn't a single "thing" with a capacity, so HOW can it be saturated or full?

 

It's a collection of computers, mostly privately owned that share data in specific ways. These individual computers could run out of storage I suppose, is that what he means? Or more likely, bandwidth could become an issue, is that what he means?

The key point is, that I don't know what he means (And I suspect he doesn't really either).

 

Equally I'm struggling to understand, if you think it's a single "thing"...with 'capacity'...By implication a capacity indicates it 'could' fill?...Or am I misunderstanding you?

 

EDIT

Oppps...my apologies...you said it 'isn't' a single "thing"

 

Don't you ever remember the days when you got a shiny new computer with a 10 gig hard drive and thought...Jeees, that's enough storage to last me a lifetime, I'll never fill that!

Edited February 15, 2016 by PeteMorris

[herbalharry]

you then call it a landing page... Make your mind up..

 

what's a landing page? if not a page you land on after typing in URL.

 

heres the searched definition:

 

"a web page which serves as the entry point for a website or a particular section of a website"

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 15:45 ----------

 

This comment means we're talking about the search functionality...

 

We know that google does so much more today, but that's not what we're discussing.

 

I said that the search screen hadn't changed significantly. It won the search engine war, and then it leveraged it into a massive advertising business, the revenue from which has turned it into one of the biggest IT companies in the world.

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 15:42 ----------

 

 

Then you went on to argue Google is not more sophisticated than Ask jeeves.

I was just pointing on you were wrong. But im happy you admit it now

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 15:47 ----------

 

 

Minor cosmetic changes is all I can see in that video.

 

so you admit its not identical.

glad we cleared that up also.

[Longcol]

Storage has become more dense..I can remember working on 404MB (not Gigabyte) disk drives that were twice the size of washing machines and cost 10's of thousands of pounds..look at the size and cost of disk drives now..

 

Lol - weren't they called "winchesters" back in the day?

 

I remember visiting Derbyshire County Councils HQ at Matlock back in 1980 as part of a day release course and being given some stats on the amount of storage available to their mainframe computer. Suffice to say the storage I've got on my mobile phone and tablet is way in excess of that and is a tiny fraction of the size.

[herbalharry]

The google search screen hasn't changed.

 

It offers a huge additional array of services now, that are not part of the search function.

 

 

Even the search function is radically different. I dont know if you ever did seo in the past, but search is becoming more and more humanised so the search engine results are almost picked by human selection.

 

It relates to petes original post 'will the internet reach saturation point'.

 

The answer is no, because giants like google (who have the brightest phd boffins around) have only just started pushing the boundaries of what's possible with the internet, search and beyond.

[Cyclone]

Thats the search results, which is down to the search algorithms, which we agreed had changed massively.

The way the user searches and the way results are displayed has barely changed in over a decade since Google launched.

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 22:12 ----------

 

Then you went on to argue Google is not more sophisticated than Ask jeeves.

I was just pointing on you were wrong. But im happy you admit it now

 

so you admit its not identical.

glad we cleared that up also.

 

I argued, and am still happy to say that the UI is not more complex, the UI for a search engine is simple, and the UI for google has barely changed since it launched.

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 22:15 ----------

 

Yeah and do you remember askjeeves and AOL?

Just the way we search and archive information is much more sophisticated now.

 

No, it isn't. We (the user) still search by typing a phrase into a text field and pressing return or clicking submit.

It hasn't changed in the slightest.

 

http://uk.ask.com/?o=10181&l=dir&ad=dirN

 

Take a look at askJeeves now... There's a text field to type your phrase and a button that says "get the answer"...

 

Take a look at google now... There's a text field to type your phrase and a button that says "Google Search".

 

Tell me how the searching has become more sophisticated?

[herbalharry]

Thats the search results, which is down to the search algorithms, which we agreed had changed massively.

The way the user searches and the way results are displayed has barely changed in over a decade since Google launched.

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 22:12 ----------

 

 

I argued, and am still happy to say that the UI is not more complex, the UI for a search engine is simple, and the UI for google has barely changed since it launched.

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 22:15 ----------

 

 

No, it isn't. We (the user) still search by typing a phrase into a text field and pressing return or clicking submit.

It hasn't changed in the slightest.

 

http://uk.ask.com/?o=10181&l=dir&ad=dirN

 

Take a look at askJeeves now... There's a text field to type your phrase and a button that says "get the answer"...

 

Take a look at google now... There's a text field to type your phrase and a button that says "Google Search".

 

Tell me how the searching has become more sophisticated?

 

You said something ridiculous and now you are creating a strawman to get out a hole. Just accept you are wrong, move on, look in the mirror, take your right hand and slap yourself firmly round the face. You've not only wasted my time, you've wasted you're own time & the time of every single forumer who's bothered to read your trifling posts.

[the_bloke]

Yes, almost certainly. But so what? If it's worth something to someone it will be stored and if it isn't it will be thrown away.

 

This basically. Storage costs money, whilst it isn't much money someone is still paying somewhere to store information. If the person paying for it decides it's useless, then it gets binned. Unless we're talking images (or especially video) the storage costs against the amount of human useful data is tiny. As costs have come down over the course of time, less data is being lost.

 

Organisations and companies come and go, websites are replaced, the information on them changes or sites are binned entirely, the 'Internet' is extremely fluid with regards to content.

 

---------- Post added 15-02-2016 at 23:00 ----------

 

You said something ridiculous and now you are creating a strawman to get out a hole. Just accept you are wrong, move on, look in the mirror, take your right hand and slap yourself firmly round the face. You've not only wasted my time, you've wasted you're own time & the time of every single forumer who's bothered to read your trifling posts.

 

I'm not sure why you are being so aggressive about it, Cyclone is right. The way the end user searches for things on the Internet hasn't changed since the inception of AltaVista; you enter text in a box, you get a list of results. The way the results are indexed and weighted to provide you with a list that the search provider thinks in meaningful to you has changed over the years, but 99% of end users couldn't care less.

[Quik]

You said something ridiculous and now you are creating a strawman to get out a hole. Just accept you are wrong, move on, look in the mirror, take your right hand and slap yourself firmly round the face. You've not only wasted my time, you've wasted you're own time & the time of every single forumer who's bothered to read your trifling posts.

 

Cyclone is quite right. The process is the same, albeit the backend is constantly tweaked to deliver more relevant results and stop irrelevant websites gaming the system. Google are biggest because they offer the best shot of getting the info you want from the phrase you type into that little box.

 

What they do with the info they get about you from what you type in that box is a different matter of course, thats become incredibly sophisticated.