I learned something about how much data we are generating everyday. I’d say it’s a fair guess that anyone who has access to the Internet has done some searches on Google.

Examples of the use of “petabyte” to describe data sizes in different fields are:

* History: According to Kevin Kelly in The New York Times, “the entire [written] works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages” would amount to 50 petabytes of data.[1]
* Computer hardware: Teradata Database 12 has a capacity of 50 petabytes of compressed data.[2][3]
* Telecoms: AT&T has about 16 petabytes of data transferred through their networks each day.[4]
* Archives: The Internet Archive contains about 3 petabytes of data, and is growing at the rate of about 100 terabytes per month as of March, 2009.[5][6]
* Internet: Google processes about 20 petabytes of data per day.[7]
* Physics: The 4 experiments in the Large Hadron Collider will produce about 15 petabytes of data per year, which will be distributed over the LHC Computing Grid.[8]
* P2P networks: As of October 2009, Isohunt has about 9.76 petabytes of files contained in torrents indexed globally.[9]
* Games: World of Warcraft utilizes 1.3 petabytes of storage to maintain its game.[10]

Petabyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.