1000 novels everyone must read: Science Fiction & Fantasy (part one) ArcaneSFantasy - Littérature SF et Fantasy. Médiathèques du Pays de Romans - Drôme. L’AutoKteb d’Ab. OCLC FictionFinder—Splash. Ricklibrarian - Librarian's Book Revoogle. Whichbook. Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | If distributed processing can search for aliens, why not web pages? Are you worried about Google's growing dominance of the internet search market?
Alex Chudnovsky certainly is. To develop a community-led alternative, the Birmingham-based Russian programmer is building a new type of search engine. By harnessing the power of distributed computing, he's already managed to build an index that covers 1bn web pages. He has called his venture Majestic-12, possibly a reference to the alleged secret committee formed after the 1947 Roswell UFO incident.
His passion for technically challenging work stems from worries about Google's iron grip on the market, its tight control of search results, and even whether some sites are indexed at all. "Because of their success, they have effectively created a monopoly in the virtual world. He has a challenge. Big shoes to fill Chudnovsky has a huge result to follow. Your home PC is clearly no match. The solution? A large-scale distributed crawling project has been attempted and involved thousands at its peak.