system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How is searching the internet, infinitely faster than searching through computer files?

How is it that you can search the internet and get millions of results in seconds, but when searching for a specific file on a windows computer, it takes what feels like forever in comparison ?

I understand a little bit of SEO, and how common searches get grouped together, but even with that, how is it still nearly impossible for my Windows computer to find a file when I give it the exact name, but google could find me millions of files with a search that is \~related\~ to the name of the website / file?
gpt
Because the internet is constantly being indexed all the time. That means, essentially, whenever you are searching for something, someone else has already found it before you, and so they just relay to you the results of their previous search rather than searching for it anew. Your hard drive, however, isn't indexed until you actually search for something meaning you actually have to go look for it.