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As you may be aware google has decided to discontinue classic sites for its user base and all but force them to "upgrade" to new sites or perform the laborious task of transferring their site to another platform. Starting September 1st (ish) it appears that it is no longer possible for anyone to edit their classic sites anymore. That has some important upshots for my "Large Number Site", or the LNS as I like to call it.

What I will now call "LNS classic" is still viewable even now as of me writing this (see for yourself), as are all the "classic googology" sites I could find. They are likely to stick around for the remainder of 2021, possibly with sites vanishing sporadically over this time period. We will have to wait and see what google does, but so far things have not played out exactly as they have described. However it does seem to be their plan to fully transition by the beginning of 2022. If you have a classic googology site now is your last chance to save it.

In any case I can no longer edit LNS classic, so it is now in its final state now and forever. This is actually why I opted to make this blog post as I will not be able to make any announcement on the classic version of my site. If people are worried, I have already archived this final version of classic LNS. Its almost identical to the site still being hosted except that my archive lacks the "Mengerscape" background. None the less all pages, text, and images have been safely stored away. When the LNS is updated its look will change quite dramatically, and probably not for the better. So it's nice to have the original look and feel of the site archived.

I have also archived as many classic googology sites that I could find. Some have, unfortunately, already disappeared, not because of the transition to new sites, but simply because the creators may have deleted them. Here is one such example of a site mentioned on Pointless Large Number Stuff that is apparently lost to time:

https://sites.google.com/site/punchingrealitysface/

CookieFonster has said that this was actually one of the better ones.

The original aarexnumbers site has also mostly been lost with only a few pages archived on the wayback. You can find what remains here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160411054029/https://sites.google.com/site/aarexnumbers/home

If anyone has any information on these site, please share.

Here is a list of all the classic googology sites that I found and archived, including mine:

  1. https://sites.google.com/site/largenumbers/
  2. https://sites.google.com/site/sjpgoogol/
  3. https://sites.google.com/site/giganticnumbers/
  4. https://sites.google.com/site/cloudygoogology/
  5. https://sites.google.com/a/hollom.com/extremely-big-numbers/
  6. https://sites.google.com/site/googology63556/
  7. https://sites.google.com/site/kelsnumberssite/
  8. https://sites.google.com/site/morethanfactorial/
  9. https://sites.google.com/site/gugology/
  10. https://sites.google.com/site/numberwikipedia/
  11. https://sites.google.com/site/pointlesslargenumberstuff/
  12. https://sites.google.com/site/therepositoryoflargenumbers/
  13. https://sites.google.com/site/googologyworld/
  14. https://sites.google.com/site/superhugenumbers/
  15. https://sites.google.com/site/techslargenumbers/
  16. https://sites.google.com/site/numbersitetma/
  17. https://sites.google.com/site/mylargenumbers/

Special thanks to Josewong for bringing many of these to my attention. CookieFonster's links helped me find the googology63556 site. The rest were obtained by going through the googology wiki.

If you know of any other classic googology sites that aren't already on this list please bring them to my attention. Even if they no longer exist, they may still be backed up on the wayback, so any links to old classic googology sites is appreciated.

As to the status of how many googology pages can be found on the wayback, I have not performed a systematic search, so I don't know. I have however checked that my own site appears to be there and CookieFonster reports that most of his site is archived there as well. Some fragments of classic googology may still remain to be found there.

As for my site, it will remain frozen in "Classic" mode for the time being. I have already converted the LNS to new sites and am currently going through it to assess the damage and make changes. This site is a separate copy of the site, which I'll call the New LNS. I've decided to hold off on publishing it until I've done a thorough revamp. I will leave the Classic LNS running for now while I work on the New LNS. It will likely remain there until either google takes it down or I am ready to publish the New LNS, whichever comes first. Just let it be known that the site is still being maintained and should continue to exist into the foreseeable future. Just so you know I do plan to continue development of the site. Archiving classic googology has had the upshot of reigniting my interest. No promises, but I may have new content on the New LNS when it launches in addition to the new look and feel of the site. I don't have any definite plans of when to publish the New LNS but it depends partly on what google does. Ideally I want some version of my site available to users. So if google decides to pull the plug on the Classic LNS early I may just decide to publish immediately on an "as-is" basis so people can still at least access my content.

As one last little note, I do feel this is the end of an era. Googology is an evolving phenomena and looking through its history this becomes more clear. A Googol Is A Tiny Dot is a far cry from the googology of today. I have been beginning to dub the time period from the formation of the googology wiki (circa 2008) up until around when the first batch of googologists began to bow out (around 2016-2018) the classical googology era. One could also take the end of classic sites as the late end of this era. At least one site seemed to already be ushering in this new age. It dubs itself modern googology:

https://sites.google.com/view/moderngoogology/

The homepage and "History of Googology" pages briefly summarize the shift that has occurred in the community. This mentions that around February of 2018 PsiCubed resigned as Admin of Googology Wiki, which could also be used to mark the end of classical googology.

In any case I have endeavored to preserve as much of the history of the "classical" era as possible.

I look forward to seeing what might lie in store for the Modern Era.

Keeping Counting,

Sbiis

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