The TED Blog has a pointer to some interesting details of how Google searches are architected. A snippet that I found intriguing:
Google’s servers basically make a copy of the entire Web, page by page, every few days, storing it in their huge data centers.
This reminds me of the mapmakers in the story by Borges, who ended up creating a map of their kingdom at a scale of 1:1…
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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