One Million Words

CNN is talking to my inner language geek today.
They have reported that according to the Global Language Monitor site English hit it's millionth word today.
Which is pretty much an insane thing to say.

English is a melting pot language. It takes words from other languages and make them it's own. It makes up entirely new words, and drops old ones. There is a reason why English is still spoken, it evolves with our cultures. Realistically we probably hit one million words a long time ago. After all, how many words were part of English and just not used any more? And is this guy taking into consideration the fact that English has been around for centuries? Are you counting it from it's beginning? Or just modern English? And what are you saying modern English is? I know of some linguists who say modern English started being spoken in the 1800's.
You really can't count the number of words in a language like that, and he's only counting words on the Internet, which makes even less sense.
But it is cool that CNN had something up about linguistics. It's not news, but it is neat.