According to Yahoo! news, Google Inc. will stop boasting on its home page about the number of Web pages it has stored in its index, even as the online search engine leader continues a crusade to prove it scans substantially more material than its rivals.

When Google started the practice in mid-2000, the index spanned 1 billion pages; as of Monday afternoon, Google's home page said the search index contained 8.17 billion pages.

That figure qualified it as the largest in the industry until last month, when nemesis Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) revealed its database included 20.8 billion documents and images. Unlike Google, Yahoo never listed that figure on its home page, disclosing it only in a Web posting by one of its executives.