Google

[Caran]

On googling something this afternoon I got to thinking (like you do) where does Google get all it's knowledge from. Would someone have to programme it all in. Where would they get it from and how could a person know everything there is to know about everything. Or am I being stupid?

[Frank97]

I think this explains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs

[Caran]

Thanks. Frank97. That was very helpful, still way over my head though.

[black_cat51]

i cant see the video, but i presume google just searches for pages that other people have inputted. Like a library - one person hasn't written all the books, but you can get them all in one place

[jim360]

The questions' probably similar in nature to another one that could be asked, namely how does a calculator know the answers to every sum there is? Of course no-one went through telling it 1+1=2, 1+2=3 and so on, but gave the calculator a general method that it could apply to answer any sum it was asked. While the methods in Google search are undoubtedly more complicated, the idea is the same: the methods are general and can applied to an arbitrary search string even if it's never been tried on Google before.