Opera's hamster savings

December 5, 2011 · by Anna Rohleder

To highlight the amazing data compression powers of Opera, we posted a real-time counter on the opera.com home page showing how much data we were saving our more than 140 million users around the world. The counter was live from November 2 to December 2. In that month, the total amount of data saved was a massive 7.5 billion megabytes!

Because that is such a big honking number, we decided to translate it into something a little easier to imagine.

If we say that 1 megabyte is the equivalent of 1 kilogram, then 7.5 billion megabytes works out to forty-nine billion five hundred million hamsters, or approximately 45, 775 (empty) passenger jets.

Would all those hamsters fit inside the jets? Now that is an entirely different question...

Readers' comments 20

Left under the original article, as archived.

TamilMonday, December 5, 2011 11:05:48 AM
7.5 billion megabytes = 7 864 320 000 000 000 bytes

7.5 billion megabytes ≈ 1 megabytes per person in the world
Zdenko TimulakMonday, December 5, 2011 11:14:41 AM
Bang AlvMonday, December 5, 2011 11:27:50 AM

cheers...
Aasem AlmgadeerMonday, December 5, 2011 11:30:30 AM
mindscrewMonday, December 5, 2011 11:47:20 AM
So, to eliminate some zeroes, that's 7.5k terabytes?
Roberto Rojas MontecinosMonday, December 5, 2011 11:54:34 AM
P2O2Monday, December 5, 2011 11:56:20 AM
Hi,

Really? In what system?

American:
7.5 billion MB = 7.5 mld MB = 7.5 mln GB = 7.500 TB = 7.500 1TB HDDs
After compression 1:10 = 750 1TB HDDs

European:
7.5 billion MB = 7.5 mld GB = 7.5 mln TB = 7.500.000 1TB HDDs
After compression 1:10 = 750.000 1TB HDDs !

Did it fit under the boss' desk? (Hopefully he works on 15th floor...) ;-)

Regards
Andrei Daniel TicleanMonday, December 5, 2011 1:25:37 PM
Charles SchlossMonday, December 5, 2011 1:39:18 PM
DefCorMaxMonday, December 5, 2011 3:03:15 PM
MB or MiB, GB or GiB, TB or TiB?
Joshua PhelpsMonday, December 5, 2011 3:04:41 PM
LOOK AT ALL THE HAMSTERS.
DO. WANT.
CoyoteeMonday, December 5, 2011 3:19:29 PM
This occidental dilettante wishes everyone at Opera a very "Merry Christmas."
SoumitraMonday, December 5, 2011 3:44:50 PM
d4rkn1ghtMonday, December 5, 2011 4:56:41 PM
Thu WinMonday, December 5, 2011 6:27:42 PM
Opera has resulted in a saving of about 80%. Original data: 1.6 gb. Data with compression: 250.6 mb. That's a saving of about 1387.8 mb or about 1.4 gb of data. This is calculated with the formula that 1 gb = 1024 mb.
SeanMonday, December 5, 2011 7:07:05 PM
Happy hamsters.
Stephen TurrellTuesday, December 6, 2011 12:25:27 AM
Might have wildly over estimated the weight of a megabyte.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaUzu-iksi8&feature=youtu.be
LLTuesday, December 6, 2011 7:56:33 AM
love hamsters
Uncle MickTuesday, December 6, 2011 4:08:08 PM
Originally posted by Tamil:

7.5 billion megabytes ≈ 1 megabytes per person in the world

Wouldn't you know it, mine is a a lolcat image.
Anh minhTuesday, December 13, 2011 6:12:48 AM
hay kc