Google: A Company, Not a Religion

摘要

Have you ever searched something on Google yielding more than 1,000 results? What a silly question. I'd guess most readers have seen results in the millions. Heck, even a vanity search may yield tens of thousands of results. Here's a better question: are you sure you've ever retrieved more than 1,000 results for a Google search? I'm not being facetious, and this isn't an attack on Google, except to those who seem intent on sanctifying my neighbors (Google is 0.6 miles straight down the road from my office here at RLG). At this writing, Google never returns more than 1,000 results from any search—typically somewhat fewer. That's easy to verify: Set your preferences to 100 results per page and search any modestly general term. Say, for example, "EContent." On July 20, 2005, that gets "about 512,000" results—and they run out at 587(!) with this message attached: "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 587 already displayed.