I can’t begin to recall how many times I have relied on the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” to fetch a file that I had inadvertently deleted without a backup. Or checked out how bad my web design was back in 1996. I mean, srsly. So I was delighted to see that the Wayback Machine had just received a huge update.
Now we cover from late 1996 to December 9, 2012 so you can surf the web as it was up until a month ago. Also, we have gone from having 150,000,000,000 URLs to having 240,000,000,000 URLs, a total of about 5 petabytes of data. (Want a humorous description of a petabyte? start at 28:55) This database is queried over 1,000 times a second by over 500,000 people a day helping make archive.org the 250th most popular website.
In the past I’ve had my doubts about the commitment the Internet Archive has toward this service, but with a major update in 20011 and another major update this year, the Wayback Machine appears to be on a solid footing. And that can only be a good thing for folks like me who ocassionally lose files or who just want to revisit the past.
Note: Thanks to my pal Tracy Seneca for the heads-up.
About Roy Tennant
Thank you, Roy for the nice comments on the Internet Archive and Wayback Machine. As you know, librarians live for positive comments from users.
onward!
-brewster