Google, the world’s leading search engine, remains the best place to find good websites (and bad ones!) despite the challenges increasingly posed to search engines by new developments such as weblog trackbacks and the growing use of dynamically-generated web pages.

Incidentally, like Douglas Adams in another context, Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, decided the answer should be a number. They changed the name from “Googol” to “Google”, so the story goes, after an angel in a hurry gave them a $100,000 cheque made out to “Google Inc.”

At 101 digits, a googol is far from being the largest number on the Web. The 40th known Mersenne prime, whose discovery was formally announced on 2 December 2003, has 6,320,430 decimal digits. And that’s still not the final answer!

The 41st known Mersenne prime, whose discovery was formally announced on 28 May 2004, has 7,235,733 decimal digits. And that’s still not the final answer!

Megadodo Publications is the name of the (fictional) publisher of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “the most totally remarkable book in the whole of the known Universe”. Plenty of pages, but a bit of a dodo when it comes to home pages.

By a totally staggering coincidence, Megadodo is also the domain name of Project Galactic Guide, a precursor to h2g2, and a most interesting site with many pages, but only one home page.

Gigablog is not (as one might suppose) a billion blogs, but a weblog service of Eadz Consulting of Auckland, New Zealand. As of December 2003 the domain is non-operational, so you won’t find any home pages there.

Hotblack Desiato is the name of an estate agent (realtor) set up in the London borough of Islington in 1979. Plenty of homes, but not so hot on home pages.

By a totally staggering coincidence, Hotblack Desiato is also the name of a character in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Pan Books, 1980) by Douglas Adams.

“I lived in Islington for many years and one day I was driving down the street and there was this new estate agency opened up called Hotblack Desiato. And I just thought it was such a wonderful name I nearly crashed the car. And I couldn’t get rid of the name from my head, and I kept thinking, ‘I wish I could come up with names that good.’ I mean, Slartibartfast, that’s great, but I wish I could come up with something as good as Hotblack Desiato. And when I was at that character who was the rock star who was spending a year dead for tax reasons, I just couldn’t get the name out of my head. So eventually I phoned them up and said, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry, do you mind if I use the name of your agency for a character.’ And they said, ‘Yes, fine, absolutely.’ And the odd thing was, thereafter people would get in touch with them and say, ‘You’ve got a bit of a cheek, haven’t you, naming your estate agency after a character ...’. Terribly unfair!” — Douglas Adams, speaking on Book Club, BBC Radio 4, 2 January 2000.