How big is the internet?

The age-old question. How big indeed?

A confusing subject, as well. Because I'll get numbers like "5 million terrabytes," from here, then I'll get "very small," from here.

Yahoo is incorrect, the internet is huge. The amount of data that the phone companies need to handle daily is fairly huge. Exact numbers? I could tell you, but you'd be very confused.


So, say, we ask a different question!

How big is the world network?

That would include every server on earth, meaning even your computer. As you sit here and read this data, your computer is interacting with the internet, thus it is part of the world network.

Now, here's where the sketchiest math you've ever seen comes into play:

I couldn't find how many people on earth own a computer, but I did come across a questionable source (from a forum) saying that the statistic for the percent of the population that "owns a computer" (finger-quotes while I type, because of those who have computer access) numbers about 66% of the population.
Shortly after typing the above, I found an even more questionable statistic that states that 76% of the US population "owns a computer" (finger-quotes while I type again). Source

Mmkay, since everyone else is making up statistics, let's make ours up too.
Say about 50% of the population owns ONE computer (as opposed to those geeks and big businesses that own like, huge amounts of computers). Hypothetically, theoretically.

Say each computer has on average......about 75 gigs of memory. Why not?

Now, say each "big business" (finger-quotes while I type) (in the world) owns their own server, "big business" for all sakes and purposes being a business that is big on the internet, that requires a lot of memory for their server. Say there are two, maybe three billion "big businesses" in the world. Each owns a server composed of five, hell ten terabytes of information (a reasonable number, considering one's computer nowadays can have at least one to one and a half terabytes easy of HD space, and two to four gigs of ram, at least on the high-end machines). Hypothetically, theoretically.

Now, for the math.

3.3 billion computers, each with 75 gigabytes of memory.
3 billion businesses, each server has 10 terabytes of memory.

for the computers, google spat this out:

two hundred forty-seven billion five hundred million gigabytes = 241,699,219 terabytes

So it is written, so shall it be done.

Now, add about 30 billion terabytes due to the businesses, and....
you've got 30,241,699,219 terabytes, rough estimate.

Official statistic:
The size of the world network, according to a rough estimation, is 30,241,699,219 terabytes in size.
For those of you who don't know what a terabyte is, that's about 30,967,500,000,000 gigabytes.