Yesterday was Google’s seventh birthday. Among the ways they marked the occasion: They eliminated the bit of text that tells how many web pages they index. As of yesterday, it was more than 8 billion.

It was kind of fun watching that number change from time to time, sorta like watching the number on the old school McDonald’s signs change (500 million served!). But as Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer products, told BizReport, “We think the absolute numbers have become meaningless, so we are encouraging users to find out for themselves.”

Search Engine Watch has an article about all this, explaining why in the scheme of things it’s a good idea.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under Internet Stuff.