• CNN, Tuesday, September 13, 2011 11:43 AM

How much money could an ad network make if could place ads on every Web site and individual Web page online? Though fraught with risk, it would still help to know how many such pages exist. Enter The World Wide Web Foundation -- founded by Tim Berners-Lee, who, according to CNN, "pretty much created the Internet" -- which has set out to determine just how big the Web really is.

With a $1 million grant from Google, the foundation plans to release the results of its online forensic search, called the World Wide Web Index, early next year, the foundation's CEO, Steve Bratt, tells CNN. "The Web Index will be the world's first multidimensional measure of the Web and its impact on people and nations," in the foundations own words. "It will cover a large number of developed and developing countries, allowing for comparisons of trends over time and benchmarking performance across countries."

According to Bratt, the foundation isn't likely to answer every question people have about the Web, but, as CNN explains, "he hopes the index, which will be presented as a series of annual reports, will go a long way toward filling in some of the gaps."

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