- A trillion web pages preserved for the public thanks to the Wayback Machine
- Decades of digital history stored on 100,000 TB providing online memory snapshots
- Everyday users and searchers depend on archived pages to recover lost information
The Internet Archive has reached a major milestone in preservation, recording a staggering 1 trillion web pages (1 followed by 12 zeros!) since it began backing up the World Wide Web nearly three decades ago.
The vast collection, equivalent to more than 100,000 TB of data, or approximately 21.3 million DVDs, is available through its Wayback Machine, a tool that allows users to explore archived versions of websites from throughout Internet history.
Since its founding in 1996, the Internet Archive has partnered with more than 1,200 libraries and institutions to create a shared digital library whose mission is to safeguard online content that might otherwise disappear.
500 million pages every day
These range from cultural archives and reporting to personal blogs and closed sites like Gawker and MTV News.
By preserving these fragments of the online world, it provides a lasting record of how information and culture evolved on the web.
If you want to see what the first few pages looked like, click here. It’s also worth checking out the Then and Now pages to see how Apple, Microsoft and Google’s sites have evolved over time.
The Wayback Machine captures approximately 500 million pages each day and serves approximately 800,000 visitors.
These visitors include academics, journalists, students, and everyday users like me and, I suspect, you. When I come across a page that has disappeared or a link that returns an error, I often consult the Wayback Machine. There isn’t always a copy, but when there is, it’s great.
The archive has been used for every proposal you can think of over the years, including immigration cases, memorial projects, and research into misinformation and media history.
Examples cited include a Canadian musician who once relied on archived concert listings to support his residency application, and researchers at King’s College London who use them to trace the evolution of digital news and open data over time.
Investigators and journalists are also turning to archives to verify deleted or altered documents, strengthening online accountability.
Throughout October, the Internet Archive is marking the trillion-page milestone with events celebrating those who built and used the archive.
The gatherings will also explore the future of web preservation and how the public can continue to contribute to the collective memory of the Internet.
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