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RSSMyWebDownload.com: Download the World Wide Web
Every week I get a dozen or so of press releases in my email inbox. Usually they come from companies that are launching a new website or service, and that want to get some free exposure. Needless to say that I skip virtually all of those.
Yesterday, however, a very intriguing press release hit my inbox. It was from a company called MyWebDownload.com. After reading through a couple of lines, I was surprised to see the service that they are offering: they basically allow users from around the world to download the World Wide Web! That is right, you can download the whole thing to your computer and be able to surf offline after that.
Needless to say that I was skeptical, but here is what I found on the FAQ that they have on the site:
Q: Isn’t the Web too big to for anyone to be able to download it?
If we consider the whole World Wide Web, yes it would be impossible to download it. The latest numbers from Google estimate that there are around 40 billion pages on the Web. If we then estimate that each page has 10KB on average, that is already 400,000,000,000 KB, or 400 Terabytes!It turns out, however, that 90% of those websites are pornographic or gambling related. Once we removed those, therefore, the size of The Web was reduced to 10% of its initial value, or 40,000,000,000 KB (40 Terabytes).
After that we removed the illegal MP3 and movie downloads, and the YouTube videos. This further reduced the size of The Web to 3,444,000,000 (or 3,444 Terabytes), and that is the size of our file collection.
I guess it makes sense.
The files are very big, each with over 100 Gigabytes. The site recommend users to use a download manager software to make sure that they will be able to pause and restart downloads if necessary.
On the company website they also mention that they are developing a product version, where you will pay $49 and receive 132 DVDs in your house with The Web. The product is not available yet though.
Overall it is a nice idea, and certainly a website to keep an eye on.
Update: It looks like the download links are currently disabled due to excessive server load.
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27 Responses to “MyWebDownload.com: Download the World Wide Web”
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Interesting, I guess I could use having the Web on my computer.
The only trouble is the size of those files!
@Teddy, yeah, you would need to let the download keep going during night and day.
By nature the web if ever-changing, and available through a browser. I fail to see any benefit whatever downloading it.
Aside from the porn, gambling and video already mentioned, I would remove (a guess of course) 90% of everything else. Maybe it wouldn’t be so big after all.
@Daniel you mean after downloading files from MyWebDownload i can surf Daily Blog Tips without internet connection?
one more stupid question.
can i use all yahoo features to fined content with files downloaded from MWD?
So now you will have a huge collection of static files on your computer. Anything that was updated since last download (like this blog) would either have to be put back into the que, or never downloaded to begin with.
The DVD’s would probably run into a lot of copyright issues because they would essentially be reprinting / selling other people’s content.
The downloads of course could be structured as a software program, but if it is only pulling from their cached servers, I would think a lawyer could argue they are just reprinting content.
Interesting enough idea I suppose.
Interesting idea, even though I see a few flaws:
1- You need 3 of the largest hard drive currently available to store this(@ 1.5TB per hard drive)
2- Bandwidth: Both on their side(server costs!) and on yours, as most people have a download cap, at 100GB or so per month.
3- The Web keeps changing. Why would I want an outdated version of a site?
4- Copyright issues: By reproducing the web and selling it, I wonder if they are not open to lawsuits from many many…wait, no. Make that open to lawsuits from ALL companies for copyright infringement.
5- If you order: 132 DVDs?! What about using dual-layers DVDs to cut that in half…
@Ben and MAthieu, here is what they say on their FAQ:
“Q: What about websites that publish new content ever day?
We recognize that one of the biggest advantages of the Web is the fact that it is dynamic and not static. To solve this problem, we will be crawling all websites that publish new content on a regular basis, and every month we will put a new file for download containing all the new information that we found. “
@Sunil, yes you will be able to surf Daily Blog Tips without an Internet connection. You won’t be able to see the newest posts though, unless you get the updated files from MyWebDownload.com.
And after we remove porn,gambling,youtube, mp3, movies … would there be any point to surf the net?
@Matej, good point. Looks like they are planning to release a version only with the porno sites indeed
, due to popular request they say.
90% of the web is porn! Seems outrageous but if they are downloading the entire content of the web, I guess they would know.
@Daniel
Updated every month? Have they not heard of daily postings on blogs, Web 2.0, social networking and all the advancements in the recent years?
This would have been a great solution…say in 2000. The web is more and more dynamic, more and more about collaboration and social.
My 2 cents anyway, considering my Internet usage. I’m sure that there must be a market for this, for archives, etc.
Yea but then files would be to big for download, that’s 90% more than now! I’m for filtering unwanted sites but they better don’t forget to include Brazzers
Q: What if I don’t have money to go to an Internet cafe and can’t access the Internet in no other way?
How the fuck are you reading this then?
lol!
I hope it has nothing to do with todays date
Well am I the only person who watches Adult Swim? This has already been done! The Tim and Eric show “Innernette” (episode 18 production code 208) features Tim and Eric’s fictitious “Cinco” company introducing their newest product “The Innernette” which packs all of the magic of the internet onto one tiny CD-ROM. The episode is comical and so is this real world application.
PS: I thought up a way to save on magazine subscriptions. I bought one issue of all my favorite magazines. Every month after reading them I put them back in the mailbox. The next day I go to the mailbox act surprised and fool myself into thinking that they are new.
Yes, totally an April Fool – a good one though
Happy April Fool’s day, everybody.
Daniel,
Nice try, but you messed up. You went from 40 TB to 3,444 TB. You mean 3.4 TB
Anyway, Happy April Fools Day everyone. Also, did anyone’s computer crash because of the Conficker worm???
Happy April Fool’s day, everybody. X 2
@Ben, I will contact the company to let them know about that typo
.
Wow, This is great! I found a really fun screen shot that someone made that looked like they were trying to download the whole internet onto a floppy disk and it kept saying disc was full. This is a great find and a really funny April Fools Day joke! Or is it possible? HAHA, just kidding!
April Fool I guess unless the company is really stupid for such a project.
This is utterly ridiculous.
1: The web is far more than their estimated few TBs. There aren’t so called 90 per cent of porno and video sites. Also, unindexed content is quite a lot in Web.
2. Most websites publish content on practically daily basis. And these guys update their files in a month. Are we supposed to download these TBs full of data by keeping the connection open for let’s say a week, and then read all outdated news and blog articles, while TBs after TBs of unwanted data resides on your HDD, only to download all 28 new files the next month?
3. It takes too much of your resources that you will feel dial up browsing is better.
4. It’s utterly unecessary and there is no point in it.
5. What about videos? Obviously you want to watch them, and while you could watch them online, you would be downloading this junk.
6. What about other files? Such as utility software etc., you can download? That takes well more than TBs. If the package includes them all, then its still wastage of space. If it doesn’t then you still have to go online to download any required software….
7. Practically this charade doesn’t strip u off the need to go online, as you still need to, to check daily updates of BBC, your blogs, your mail, and hell a lot more…
I don’t remember of other things, but this is toooooo much of a wastage of a service. And see that service has got no alexa rank, and it still has pretty much traffic, that it says about 1 million people are downloading RIGHT NOW…
Hehe. Thats the points that make a good post for a nice FOOLS’ DAY, DANIEL. You may want to check out my post too… at my blog.
I came to this late, but I laughed anyway.
Certainly this one is a nice concept but what is the benefit of this. I mean people do not have the time and that’s why you skip all those press releases.
So if they able to provide such kind of information which is beneficial to us … like sorting out internet as per our desire than this will be more logical and nice idea.
The DVD’s would probably run into a lot of copyright issues because they would essentially be reprinting / selling other people’s content.
The downloads of course could be structured as a software program, but if it is only pulling from their cached servers, I would think a lawyer could argue they are just reprinting content.
Wow!
This is really something… huuge!