Google and MySpace: Hiding billions of pages and millions of friends
Both Google and MySpace proudly promote the depth of their reach by brandishing awe inspiring numbers. A search at Google on a generic word such as “car” will typically yield over a billion claimed search result Web pages to visit and MySpace Tom Anderson founder proudly claims every one of the tens of millions of MySpace members as his friend.
Try to take Google and MySpace up on their boasting, however, and you’ll find Google lacking in search results to show you and MySpace lacking in friends for you to see.
A search for “car” at Google yields “1,350,000,000 results.” For those truly interested in cars, however, their search will be prematurely halted at result number 990. For those ambitious searchers who arrive at page 99 of results, Google removes its onward “Next” result page arrow and only offers a backward facing “Previous” result page arrow.
At MySpace Founder Tom Anderson’s MySpace profile he posts this unfriendly “Note”:
If you try to view my friends list you won't see all 85 million people. This was bogging down the system, so we made it only show 40 people. So you wont be able to see the friends on my list.