The content of the internet has grown rapidly to fill many information niches and forms a critical—and entertaining—resource for the public. Unlike a library, however, there is no complete catalog of pages on the web and no central registry of updates. Pages on the web are born, updated, languish, and disappear independently. A web resource, such as a search engine that wants to capture a significant part of the web, has to keep up. In this lecture, Carrie Grimes will explore how to apply models developed for biological and physical systems to a new context in order to understand information creation and updates on the web.