The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web[1], initiated in 1996 and officially launched in 2001 by the founders of Internet[2] Archive. Its main objective is to store and present versions of web pages across different points in time. As of January 2024, it has archived more than 860 billion web pages. The Wayback Machine uses software that crawls the web to collect publicly accessible information. The data is stored on PetaBox rack systems, with storage capacity continually expanding over the years. Users can make archival requests and view a site web[3]’s evolution over time. The Wayback Machine also has key features like the Wayforward Machine and the ‘Save a Page’ feature. Despite its usefulness in scholarly, journalistic and research fields, it has faced various legal and ethical challenges.
Les Wayback Machine est un digital archive de la World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" to see how websites looked in the past. Its founders, Brewster Kahle et Bruce Gilliat, developed the Wayback Machine to provide "universal access to all knowledge" by preserving archived copies of defunct web pages.
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Type de site | Archive |
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Fondée |
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Area served | Worldwide (except China, Russiaet Bahrain) |
Propriétaire | Internet Archive |
URL | web |
Commercial | No |
Inscription | Optional |
Statut actuel | Actif |
Written in | HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python |
Launched on May 10, 1996, the Wayback Machine had saved more than 38.2 billion web pages at the end of 2009. As of January 3, 2024, the Wayback Machine has archived more than 860 billion web pages and well over 99 petabytes of data.