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Matthew writes: Panic has begun to build amongst Internet users as Google approaches the fabled “32-bit barrier”–also known as Y32b–in the number of web pages that it caches.

“Today, Google is caching 4,285,199,774 web pages. The 32-bit barrier, 2^32, is 4,294,967,296. So as you can see, we’re just 10 million web pages from Armageddon.” Says Idaho based Internet researcher Ed McGillis.

“See, Google’s index uses 32-bit pointers to reference each unique page. It’s based on 32-bit Linux machines. They did it for speed optimization. So they can’t index a single page beyond the 32-bit barrier. Once they hit that barrier, there’s no telling what might happen.”

“I’ve got three doomsday scenarios: Worst of all, Google overruns its buffers and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. Second, they stop adding new sites just before the barrier, and the web basically freezes at that point—no further growth of the Internet. Third, the souls of the dead will no longer pass into the now full Google cache, causing an apocalyptic confrontation between the living and the dead here on Earth. That would sort of be the best-case scenario.

Officially, Google claims that no problem exists. “Our indexes aren’t simple 32-bit integers. That’s not how we’re doing it. I don’t know where these rumors came from or why people believe them, but there’s really no issue.”

While most Internet users are simply hoping for the best, some are taking things into their own hands. Charles Perkins has begun caching his own web pages in a dugout shelter behind his home. “I’ve got 2500KV/A of UPS powering a cluster of 16 linux boxes, and I’ve downloaded every Google web search I can think of onto these servers. I should be able to keep searching for about six months after the end comes. Hopefully, civilization will be getting back to normal by then.”