The internet has begun to become a rather homogeneous place, pretty much every website resembling each other, and given that 90% of them are run by 10% of the population, this isn't surprising.
But, searching as I do for peculiar things in extraordinary detail I noticed that I was reaching the end of results often quicker than I expected. I mean, my interests are obscure, but the internet is a big place...
So I Googled Dog.
WONDERFUL! Over 7 and a half BILLION results! Boy oh boy I'm gonna learn some fun things about dogs.
I quickly go past the first couple of dozen pages - first page results seldom interest me, I'm looking for the obscure, remember, and the curious.
Wait a minute - Page 23 - now only 23 pages of results? WTF happened? And, no, I don't believe there's just 230 results. Nice try guys.
Scroll to the bottom of the page:
Notice how Google is censoring me - it makes it an option to search with omitted results included, but really, I should trust it. All the other missing results will be much like the results I've already flipped through.
What is rather droll here is that there are a lot of concerned people worried about Google's compliance with Chinese censorship, and aren't paying any mind to the fact that Google is fully censoring any searches done here. And - 23 pages of results - how many were paid placements for dogfood - petstores - etc, etc. So basically I search for "Dog" and I'm left with the impression the entire World Wide Web is roughly the size of ... I dunno - Drumheller?
I'm being shown 0.0000030383091149273452% of the internet's results on dogs. It's like Google has decided the remaining 99.999999+% of the web is dark. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."