
Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles: Usenet - gojomo
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/
======
Anon84

          In the end, then, the rusting shell of Google Groups is
          a reminder that Google is an advertising company — not 
          a modern-day Library of Alexandria.

~~~
ez77
Well, Wired is no NGO either... and yet its article prompted Google to do
something about it, as reported by nebula
[<http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet_fix/>]. A nice example of two
"evil" companies benefiting the public good...

I must confess to being a brainwashed Googlevangelist, but anyway... if it
wasn't for Google's (lucrative) actions, maybe non-profit projects such as the
Internet Archive might not have saved those magtapes in time.

------
hugothefrog
I used to participate in Usenet a lot, back in the mid 90s. Rather stupidly, I
set the no archive header (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-No-Archive>) on all
my posts. Now I can only find myself quoted in replies.

Shame, really.

~~~
shrughes
Well, I _didn't_ set the X-No-Archive header. And now there's no chance that
I'll ever get elected to be President of the United States.

~~~
eli
Same here. Sheesh, remember when we all used to use our full names when
posting online?

~~~
viraptor
Actually that's a nice way of filtering mailing lists nowadays. Posts worth
reading and posts signed with the full name are almost the same ones... If you
missed something really interesting from other posts, it will most likely be
quoted later on anyways.

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anigbrowl
The sad thing is that if Google had had the foresight to build in decent
browsing, filtering etc., and polish up NNTP a bit, they could own the vast
internet message board space, and we would be reading this on
alt.hacking.ycombinator or suchlike.

It's not that people aren't interested in chatting to each other on the
internet, I waste depressingly large quantities of time reading and posting in
5-6 different forums, this being one of them. There's still one usenet group I
read regularly, but it's degraded to 50% spam and embittered ranting from an
unhappy kibo clone.

~~~
hugothefrog
I would much prefer to have all my web message boards available through a
single interface, in a single program.

I haven't seen any web message board UI that truly brings something new to the
threaded-discussion style that pretty much all the old Usenet clients used.

Which is a shame, really, because I'd much prefer to read blogs via an NNTP
reader (I suspect, anyway).

~~~
nebula
_I'd much prefer to read blogs via an NNTP reader_

If you use Thunderbird RSS reader to read blogs, you pretty much get the Same
look and feel. I was used to Thunderbird NNTP client, when I started adding
blog subscriptions to Thunderbird, the transition was seamless

------
ramen
Google Groups used to be a great service when they first took over Deja News,
but things have been gradually deteriorating ever since.

They used to be read-only; now, they allow anyone with a fake account to post.
They are a huge source of Usenet spam. I have been kill-filing posts from
Google Groups for about a year. It's not a pleasant thing to do, since there
still are quite a few people who I like to read but only see quoted in replies
now because they use Google Groups.

Whenever someone posts the same article 10 times in a row on a Usenet
newsgroup, I always look at the mail header, and every single time it is from
Google Groups. I don't know what is wrong, but there must be some user
interface bug that causes people to resubmit their post. Maybe they don't
realize that Usenet has a lag between posting and seeing your post. Maybe
there's something wrong with the submit button. I don't know, but I've been
seeing this phenomenon for a few years now.

Initially, Google Groups made a clear distinction between Usenet newsgroups
and Google's own groups, but they've been blurring the two more and more over
the years. The result is that a lot of people don't even know they're posting
to Usenet, and are unaware of the different etiquette and social customs there
(real names, top posting, etc.). Lately they've started including third-party
forums as well, so now it's basically a free-for-all, and there is no way to
just search Usenet anymore. You have a choice between "Google Groups" and "all
groups", where the latter includes Google Groups, Usenet, _and_ random
bulletin boards on the web.

If Google isn't interested in supporting Usenet with a decent archive anymore
(and I can understand their reluctance, since I'm sure there's little to no
money in it) I wish they would pass the responsibility to someone else and get
out of the way, because at this point I wish Deja News was still around - I'd
have no need for Google Groups anymore.

And I know everyone loves to bash on Usenet, about how it's obsolete and dead,
but I have to say that at least when it comes to programming language
newsgroups, it's still hopping. I follow about a dozen programming newsgroups,
and I can't keep up. About once a week I have to "mark all as read". As long
as it still causes information overload, I don't think it can be fairly
declared extinct.

~~~
pyre
It might be worth it to point out that a lot of projects' mailing lists are
mirrored on Usenet. I'm not 100% sure if any or all of them _accept_ posts
from Usenet, but I'm fairly certain that at least a few of them do.

i.e. I believe that comp.lang.python is the same as the python-list mailing
list.

------
e40
When google first put the archive online, I could find 100's of posts I made
in the 80's. Now, there are a few 10's. At this point, I don't even use the
search for old stuff, assuming that the bits have just rotted so much that
it's not worth it.

~~~
eli
You mean when they first bought out Deja, right?

~~~
e40
Yep.

------
mike_organon
I had noticed problems a few weeks ago, but it seems to be working today.
[http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/search?group=al...](http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/search?group=alt.hypertext&q=mosaic&qt_g=Search+this+group)

And the advanced search always worked and still works better.
[http://groups.google.com/advanced_search?q=&sitesearch=g...](http://groups.google.com/advanced_search?q=&sitesearch=groups.google.com&as_ugroup=alt.hypertext)

~~~
tokenadult
Thanks for the tip about advanced search. That brought back memories of a
decade ago when I was very active on Usenet. All the messages I was expecting
to find appear to be there.

------
nebula

      (Update: Google has begun fixing the Usenet archive in response to this article)

~~~
tjic
Good info.

Any pointers to details?

~~~
WalterGR
Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive

<http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet_fix/>

------
zandorg
Time to take back Usenet and build another archive independently of Google,
somehow.

~~~
Perceval
Machiavelli warned Princes about the danger of being an 'unarmed prophet.'

He might similarly warn you about being an 'unfunded revolutionary.'

~~~
zandorg
I'm not name dropping, but I have exchanged emails with Brewster Kahle of the
Internet Archive, and he's taken a couple of my ideas under advisement.

------
joe_the_user
Uh,

The Google books settlement gives Google something like a monopoly on
"orphaned" titles, titles that would _otherwise be entirely unavailable_.
Whether that's justified or not is debatable.

But unless there's something I don't know, Google Groups is just one archive
of usenet and anyone with enough space could create another - in fact, I seem
encounter other such archives regularly in my ... Google searches.

------
zenocon
It isn't just the usenet archive search that sucks -- it includes pretty much
anything under the google groups banner. I'm often searching groups dedicated
to projects under google code, and the search results are dismal more often
than not.

------
colbyolson
Upvoted to show support for the article and its point. I've once wondered into
Google's Usenet jungle, it's a terrible mess.

------
viraptor
A bit off-topic, but I just read the features list for mosaic
([http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/msg/7fde2f6d4d5...](http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/msg/7fde2f6d4d5dc4e7))
and was really surprised how close it is to browsers nowadays. The only
serious improvements that current firefox has over that mosaic are: tabs, JS
and blocking stuff. (I'm not counting stuff that's just a simple improvement -
like rendering new html+css, ability to use icons for favourite pages, etc.)

It's a bit sad :(

~~~
tigerthink
What exactly were you hoping for?

------
mleonhard
It looks like they already fixed the search. I can find my own embarrassing
posts from when I was a teenager. I had forgotten how excited I was about
computer games. :P

~~~
giardini
They may claim that they've fixed it, but they haven't.

Try to search for old posts by USENET group and with a fixed e-mail address -
it will not work properly. What doesn't work:

\- search by e-mail address,

\- search by USENET group, e.g., comp.lang.perl.misc,

\- you must log in to get any reasonable functionality.

Why don't they give it back to the Deja people along with sufficient funding?
They were doing it just fine, thank you. Wouldn't worry me if _all_ Google
Groups posts were trashed and USENET restored to it's primary role.

USENET was once the most important Internet resource to me and the only one I
would have paid for. It's been seriously damaged under Google's reign. Heads
really, really should roll over this.

------
peregrine
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870126>

In reference.

