If Google Groups is actually going to die would it not be worth scraping the history for at least some groups?

It would be so much nicer if someone from Google -- we know they are reading this forum could release the archive to Archive.org. Google doesn't do much with it, they removed Advanced Search so... why not?

It's due to legal challenges, unfortunately, and as Manu Cornet's org chart depicts[1], this means that there just isn't the resources at Google to deal with it, nor is there the insurgent counter-culture to release it via torrent on 4chan.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6

While I also lament what Google Groups has become, let's not rewrite history. By 2001, Dejanews had rebranded as a shopping comparison site, ran out of money, and was on the verge of shutting down. I don't remember many people being upset about Google stepping in to save the archive. And, in the early days, the signs were positive. Google actually cared about it at that point, and still had a good reputation. They expanded the archive with contributions from other sources and worked to improve the search and posting interfaces. Yes, eventually they lost interest and it degraded into the current abomination, but that happened later.

> I don't remember many people being upset about Google stepping in

I don't remember any former/active usenet user not being upset! Specifically because Deja had a full archive and robust search, and it was expected that the service would be Googlified into oblivion. Which happened, and even faster than the biggest doomsayers predicted.

In 2001? "Googlified"??? Do you even realize this was Google's first acquisition?

Either you're making things up, or you are rewriting history as GP said.

Yes, Googlified - it was not resurrected and operated separately as-was, but immediately stuffed into Google Groups. I and many others considered Google Groups to be vastly worse than Deja News. I even found this subthread because my first instinct was to CMD-F and search for 'deja' when I saw a Groups-related discussion was happening.

Google still had a broadly positive reputation among technical people in 2011, let alone 2001.

My recollection is that Google of that time still believed its own "Dont' be Evil" mantra, and so did its users.

DejaNews was going down, and Google with their buckets of money and great technology stepped in to save it. The initial expectation was that it'd just keep going, maybe with better integration of Usenet content with Google's search (which was a desirable thing, because so much history and detail was locked up in Usenet archives).

Google of 2001 is not the Google of 2023. If anything its the exact opposite.

Yup, Deja destroyed itself - their interface and IIRC search got much worse before the end.

Finally someone with experience with usenet speaks up. I was pretty sad when Google acquired dejanews.

I don't understand the author's concern but perhaps as a person who doesnt use Google Groups I don't understand the utility. If newsgroups were being used before whats stopping them from being used now? You can get a block account for $5 dollars with unlimited text access. The only thing different from long ago is that most ISPs don't provide free text newsgroup accounts anymore. As for the author mailing lists have always worked...

Seems much ado about nothing.

EDIT: Ah I now realize Google Groups was build ON TOP of usenet. I see part of the problem. Injecting that history back into the annals of the news servers is going to be a challenge.

As someone who helps maintain some discussion mailing lists for a small non-profit, mailing lists "work" inasmuch as the email is accepted without error by hosts that, if you're lucky, just route it to spam.

"The sad thing is we may loose the history that came from dejanews ..."

What is the status of usenet archives and backups, circa 2023 ?

I've mentioned this before and will mention it again now:

I am very enthusiastic about preserving usenet/fidonet archives and will contribute cash money as well as free rsync.net storage to any serious endeavors in that realm.

There's [1]

A couple of years ago there was a bunch of excitement around[2] (discussion[3]), but looks like it's been taken off the internet archive due to legal challenges trying to get some material removed from it. Lots of copies out there if you search for UTZOO Wiseman Usenet Archive, though.

[1] https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical

[2] https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24770617

ah, dejanews! So many times I plugged a build error message into their search and got the exact fix I needed. One search and problem solved. That probably wouldn't happen today even if they were still around, but it was a great experience to have had.

Usenet still exists and is actually getting better with time. There's not much spam and the only people there left are geeks that care about the topic. The eternal september is over and it's time to start again. You can get text only access for your usenet client (or use a web interface) at https://www.eternal-september.org/ . I post on alt.startrek and alt.cyberpunk every now and then and get decent conversations. I also posted back in the 90s.

Usenet need not rely on google groups mangling of deja news.

alt.folklore computers

comp.unix*

comp.misc

comp.lang.*

comp.infosystems.gemini

comp.infosystems.gopher

And if you want to see idiots fighting, comp.os.linux.advocacy

I prefer FIDO and DoveNet for productive talks on casual OS discussions.

I like DoveNet quite a bit... fsx is decent as well. Haven't really looked at any others recently.

Hmmm... thanks for the update and link to eternal september. The way things are these days, I think I'm pretty much ready to try a return to usenet.

Ironically although not a student or AOL user back then, my usage of usenet was after eternal september....

Thanks for this. I was a heavy NNTP user back in the early 90s and will have a look at your recommendations.

I've got a lot of spare disk space ,(several TB)... maybe I could setup a mirror. Also, with current BTRFS compression, it should be possible to achieve good ratios for text files.

Thanks for mentioning Eternal September [0]! I used their site in the past but had been using http://news.aioe.org [1] up until it went offline [2] possibly due to a disk failure [3], as it seemed more performant than Eternal September. As far as no-cost text-only newsgroup read/write access, I think we are down to Eternal September and possibly the BlueWorld Usenet Farm[4]. Though arguably, if I'm interested in keeping newsgroups alive, perhaps paying for access from a provider such as EasyNews, GigaNews, etc. [5].

[0] https://www.eternal-september.org/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221220194002/http://news.aioe....

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/10m9n22/aioe_gone/

[3] https://groups.google.com/g/eternal-september.support/c/Elen...

[4] https://usenet.blueworldhosting.com/

[5] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Usenet_Providers_and...

> The sad thing is we may loose the history that came from dejanews,

I'm actually quite happy with that. I was on Usenet as an imprudent teenager. I'm sure there's stuff I posted that I don't want associated with me now.

Also, possibly some stuff that could associate this nickname with my real name, and since there's also stuff on HN I don't want associated with me.

You're not alone in this. It might be a good idea to delete or edit this post; As currently written, it provides instructions and encouragement to make these connections. :)

archive.org has some historical usenet dumps. There's no viewer so you need to download them as individual files (generally 1 file per group).

The groups I downloaded from archive.org are all in standard mbox-format and can be searched using mboxgrep. That has been good enough for me when I have wanted to search for something. In the past I often went to google groups, but I never manage to find anything there now it seems.