If the Internet Were a Galaxy it Would Look Like This

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If you ever have a hard time grasping how everything on the Internet is connected, this new space-like visualization could help clear up some things.

Russian programmer Ruslan Ekineev created The Internet Map of the world wide web, plotting more than 350,000 websites as though they were planets. While the map shows site's relative positions to each other, the websites are not accurately aligned to a surface, as they appear.

Each planet's size is determined by its relative traffic at the end of 2011; planets' locations are determined by other sites with overlapping links; and colors represent the 196 countries of origin included on the map.

Not suprisingly, smack in the middle of the map of the Internet galaxy are Google, Facebook, Yahoo and YouTube.

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Check out the site and let us know what you think. Does this show you something unexpected about the Internet? Bonus points if you can find Mashable on there without the search tool (the screenshot below's a hint).