(a) It's a proxy for traction. Greplin indexes data that can't be crawled; users have to authorize it to index their data. So aside from how hard of an engineering feat it is, the fact that they've indexed this much data probably means that they have a sizable number of users.
(b) While you're right that the technical challenge of indexing that many documents is easier now than in 2001 thanks to things like AWS (and numerous open source projects), to do it with a team of six is still impressive.
My gripe was with the article and not with what greplin is doing. Details like what you have mentioned in point 1 would have made the article much more useful rather than multiplying some random number from 1998 and expecting the readers to have a wow moment. Some idea about how they actually index the items, how they store this massive data, how the search is done to keep it fast etc. is what I would have liked to read.
(a) It's a proxy for traction. Greplin indexes data that can't be crawled; users have to authorize it to index their data. So aside from how hard of an engineering feat it is, the fact that they've indexed this much data probably means that they have a sizable number of users.
(b) While you're right that the technical challenge of indexing that many documents is easier now than in 2001 thanks to things like AWS (and numerous open source projects), to do it with a team of six is still impressive.