Earthlings Consume a Lot of Internet Data

I’m not sure if you knew this, but this here Internet thing? It’s pretty big. I’m not sure how big, since I don’t have nine lifetimes to calculate every single website that exists, but I assure you — it’s big. We know this because a group of UC-San Diego academic types took the time to calculate how much data was used in 2008. Their answer?

9.57ZB.

To paraphrase Marty McFly, “What the hell is a gigawatt ZB?!” A “ZB” is a Zettabyte, which translates into one billion terabytes. That translates into one trillion gigabytes. From there you’re on your own with the math.

That’s a lot of data, but it’s also believed to be short. After all, UC San Diego failed to include privately built and operated servers that companies like Microsoft and Google operate. That, my friends, is an impressive amount of data for us to consume…

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