# Printing out the entire internet **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 16, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827 "2006-02-16T17:20:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/1 "2006-02-16T17:20:37Z")
How much paper would it take to print out the entire internet. Fonts should be readable, of course. Everything should appear formatted just as it is on computer screens. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Nature\_s\_Call](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nature_s_call/32/19006_2.png) [@Nature\_s\_Call](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nature_s_Call)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/2 "2006-02-16T17:22:51Z")
It’s [already been done.](http://bbspot.com/News/2004/03/google_print.html) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/3 "2006-02-16T17:26:14Z")
> [@Nature's Call](#): > > It’s [already been done.](http://bbspot.com/News/2004/03/google_print.html) Nice specious report… 🙂 -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/4 "2006-02-16T17:35:11Z")
The first thing you have to do is get a good definition of what the “internet” is. Google indexes billions of pages but that isn’t even close to the whole internet. There is the “deep web” that contains things like databases of newspapers, employee records etc. that are accessible to people that have access and know where it is. Some pay sites fall into this category as well. More problematic is that some web sites can generate content dynamically making the results infinite. You could be looking at 8 billion pages, 800 billion, or many trillions depending on how you define it. The math to multiply that by the thickness of a type of paper of your choice is trivial so I will leave that up to you after you define what you want. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/5 "2006-02-16T17:41:51Z")
Notwithstanding that fine piece of satire. . . . Google currently indexes on the order of about [10 billion pages](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/technology/27search.html?ex=1285473600&en=690f19edefa7572e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss). That is not the entire content of the Internet, however. But if we pursue that figure, I am guessing that each page would take an average of something like 2.5 pages to print on paper as if you hit the print button on a browser (just a WAG). So we’re up to 25 billion sides or 12.5 billion sheets of paper double-sided. An old copy of the DC yellow pages within reach is about 1500 pages. So we’re talking 8.33 million books the size of a phone book. That’s just for what Google indexes, which is hardly everything available on the Internet. Some estimate the “deep web” content to be as high as [2000 times](http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/bergman.html) what is available and searchable on the surface. Just to give this some scale, the Library of Congress has [18 million books](http://ask.yahoo.com/20020605.html), most of which are probably smaller than phonebook size. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/6 "2006-02-16T17:43:26Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Notwithstanding that fine piece of satire. . . . Sorry, **Shagnasty** , I meant the link in the post _before_ yours. . . 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![MrSquishy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9e5f3/32.png) [@MrSquishy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrSquishy)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/7 "2006-02-16T17:50:32Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > How much paper would it take to print out the entire internet. Minor geeky pet peeve nitpick: This would technically only make sense if you replace “internet” with “world wide web”. The Internet is not really printable. Colloquially, you’re probably good. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/8 "2006-02-16T17:54:39Z")
> [@MrSquishy](#): > > Minor geeky pet peeve nitpick: This would technically only make sense if you replace “internet” with “world wide web”. The Internet is not really printable. > > Colloquially, you’re probably good. 🙂 Oh, have some fun with it. What IF you printed out all those 1’s and 0’s for every PGP encryption key as it goes back and forth. It would probably take up a lot of paper to print the binaries for every MP3 on every FTP site in the world. Usenet wouldn’t be problem to print. Every piece of e-mail ever sent would proabbly be pretty big too. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/9 "2006-02-17T00:15:15Z")
Plus, don’t forget about all the traffic in online games. Every time your World of Warquest XI Online character does anything, your computer is sending a message over the Internet (but not the WWW) to tell the server what you’re doing, and the server sends back the response. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/10 "2006-02-17T00:30:37Z")
Even if you restrict yourself to the WWW, what do you about, say, [Homestar Runner](http://www.homestarrunner.com)? ---
**Author:** ![TJdude825](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TJdude825](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJdude825)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-out-the-entire-internet/344827/11 "2006-02-17T01:39:07Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > Even if you restrict yourself to the WWW, what do you about, say, [Homestar Runner](http://www.homestarrunner.com)? Even if you ignored it entirely, most of the information would be there, because there are plenty of transcripts and images of every H\*R cartoon around somewhere.