- A trillion web pages preserved for the public through the Wayback Machine
- Decades of digital history stored across 100,000TB offering snapshots of online memory
- Everyday users and researchers depend on archived pages to recover lost information
The Internet Archive has reached a major preservation milestone, 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 100,000TB of data, or around 21.3 million DVDs, is available through its Wayback Machine, a tool which allows users to explore archived versions of websites from across the internet’s history.
Since it began life in 1996, the Internet Archive has partnered with over 1,200 libraries and institutions to craft a shared digital library with a mission is to safeguard online content that might otherwise disappear.
500 million pages each day
This ranges from cultural records and news stories to personal blogs and shuttered sites like Gawker and MTV News.
By preserving these fragments of the online world, it provides a lasting record of how information and culture have evolved on the web.
If you want to see what the earliest 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 about 500 million pages each day and serves roughly 800,000 visitors.
Those visitors include academics, journalists, students, and everyday users like me and, I suspect, you. When I encounter a page that has vanished or a link that returns an error, I’ll often check the Wayback Machine. It doesn’t always have a copy, but when it does it’s brilliant.
The archives have been used for every propose you can think of over the years including in immigration cases, memorial projects, and research into misinformation and media history.
Cited examples 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 it to trace how digital news and open data have developed over time.
Investigators and journalists also turn to the archive to verify deleted or altered material, strengthening online accountability.
Throughout October, the Internet Archive is marking the trillion-page milestone with events celebrating those who built and use the archive.
The gatherings will also explore the future of web preservation and how the public can continue contributing to the collective memory of the internet.
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