• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 22, 2011

Wow. That's a stat to get your mind around for sure. And Google brand chief Andy Berndt just asked Eric Schmidt what he makes of it.

It's a true projection, Schmidt said, but it's not the kind of information we historically thing about. It's mostly user-generated stuff – people sending texts, emails, photos to each other, etc. – not the kind of info you might get from a book, a library or even the professional media.

Now that's a good thing for Google, because it makes search and navigation even more critical, but it isn't necessarily a good thing for making it easier to do.

"It becomes a search problem. It becomes a navigation problem," Schmidt said, because "no human can get through that."

He cited new compression technologies that would be able to put a petabyte of data onto a disc, enough to put 600 hours of video on it.

"You can never watch all that video, but you can carry it around and feel good about it," Schmidt said, adding, "That will happen."

Ultimately, Schmidt believes technology will solve even that problem, including "artificial intelligence at the server level" that will actually understand what part of that infinite information trail a user needs and is looking for. In the meantime, you can just log onto MediaPost's "Raw News" blog.