The End of Google Groups.

[[e-mail]]

Starting tomorrow, Google will no longer support new Usenet content.
This is probably the last post I will make through GG.

What a long strange trip its been. I've been on Usenet since the early 80s.
At that time, though certainly some people kept private archives, most
regarded Usenet content as ephemeral as toilet paper - once it aged off
your server, it was gone.

Those were the days when the most popular external storage medium
was the 1.44 Mb floppy, and hard drives cost big bucks. As we all know,
storage now approaches free, and you buy it by the Terabyte. That changed
things.

In 1995, Dejanews started offering the first web-accessible, public archives.
I recall a certain amount of gnashing of teeth, since now people could
be confronted with things they'd said years before. How right they were!
It actually happened to me in a couple of job interviews.

In 2001, Google acquired the Dejanews archive. This was back in the
days when Google's slogan was 'Don't be evil', and for quite a long time
they were good stewards. But was time moved on, it wasn't kept up;
search was gradually enshittified, original headers and format
concealed, and gaps appeared in the archive.

More recently, complaints about spammers have been ignored, or
even worse, reportedly led to groups being dropped.

In the last month, rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.fandom, and some
other groups have been made unusable via GG due to a spammer
who robo-posts Thai language spam at the rate of several new threads
a minute, completely burying any real content.

Google has done nothing, though its imminent shutdown of GG will
prevent it leaking to the rest of usenet.

Its the spammer, not the shut down, that drove me from GG to
eternal-september a few weeks ago rather than today.

GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.

pt

[Lynn McGuire]

Post by ***@gmail.com
Starting tomorrow, Google will no longer support new Usenet content.
This is probably the last post I will make through GG.
What a long strange trip its been. I've been on Usenet since the early 80s.
At that time, though certainly some people kept private archives, most
regarded Usenet content as ephemeral as toilet paper - once it aged off
your server, it was gone.
Those were the days when the most popular external storage medium
was the 1.44 Mb floppy, and hard drives cost big bucks. As we all know,
storage now approaches free, and you buy it by the Terabyte. That changed
things.
In 1995, Dejanews started offering the first web-accessible, public archives.
I recall a certain amount of gnashing of teeth, since now people could
be confronted with things they'd said years before. How right they were!
It actually happened to me in a couple of job interviews.
In 2001, Google acquired the Dejanews archive. This was back in the
days when Google's slogan was 'Don't be evil', and for quite a long time
they were good stewards. But was time moved on, it wasn't kept up;
search was gradually enshittified, original headers and format
concealed, and gaps appeared in the archive.
More recently, complaints about spammers have been ignored, or
even worse, reportedly led to groups being dropped.
In the last month, rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.fandom, and some
other groups have been made unusable via GG due to a spammer
who robo-posts Thai language spam at the rate of several new threads
a minute, completely burying any real content.
Google has done nothing, though its imminent shutdown of GG will
prevent it leaking to the rest of usenet.
Its the spammer, not the shut down, that drove me from GG to
eternal-september a few weeks ago rather than today.
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.
pt

I came to usenet through Compuserve in 1996 ???

I assume that you are going to sign up for Eternal-September and use
Thunderbird as your news reader ?

Lynn

[Tony Nance]

Post by Lynn McGuire

Post by ***@gmail.com
Starting tomorrow, Google will no longer support new Usenet content.
This is probably the last post I will make through GG.
What a long strange trip its been. I've been on Usenet since the early 80s.
At that time, though certainly some people kept private archives, most
regarded Usenet content as ephemeral as toilet paper - once it aged off
your server, it was gone.
Those were the days when the most popular external storage medium
was the 1.44 Mb floppy, and hard drives cost big bucks. As we all know,
storage now approaches free, and you buy it by the Terabyte. That changed
things.
In 1995, Dejanews started offering the first web-accessible, public archives.
I recall a certain amount of gnashing of teeth, since now people could
be confronted with things they'd said years before. How right they were!
It actually happened to me in a couple of job interviews.
In 2001, Google acquired the Dejanews archive. This was back in the
days when Google's slogan was 'Don't be evil', and for quite a long time
they were good stewards. But was time moved on, it wasn't kept up;
search was gradually enshittified, original headers and format
concealed, and gaps appeared in the archive.
More recently, complaints about spammers have been ignored, or
even worse, reportedly led to groups being dropped.
In the last month, rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.fandom, and some
other groups have been made unusable via GG due to a spammer
who robo-posts Thai language spam at the rate of several new threads
a minute, completely burying any real content.
Google has done nothing, though its imminent shutdown of GG will
prevent it leaking to the rest of usenet.
Its the spammer, not the shut down, that drove me from GG to
eternal-september a few weeks ago rather than today.
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.
pt

I came to usenet through Compuserve in 1996 ???
I assume that you are going to sign up for Eternal-September and use
Thunderbird as your news reader ?
Lynn

I came to usenet because someone said there was a new spiffy SF show
coming out, and its creator/primary writer was on this thing called
usenet. (Babylon 5, JMS) Since the B5 pilot was aired in Feb 1993, this
must have been late 1992. The B5 groups made me aware of this wonderful
group, which is the only one I've paid attention to for many years now.

Tony

[Cryptoengineer]

Post by Tony Nance

Post by Lynn McGuire

Post by ***@gmail.com
Starting tomorrow, Google will no longer support new Usenet content.
This is probably the last post I will make through GG.
What a long strange trip its been. I've been on Usenet since the early 80s.
At that time, though certainly some people kept private archives, most
regarded Usenet content as ephemeral as toilet paper - once it aged off
your server, it was gone.
Those were the days when the most popular external storage medium
was the 1.44 Mb floppy, and hard drives cost big bucks. As we all know,
storage now approaches free, and you buy it by the Terabyte. That changed
things.
In 1995, Dejanews started offering the first web-accessible, public archives.
I recall a certain amount of gnashing of teeth, since now people could
be confronted with things they'd said years before. How right they were!
It actually happened to me in a couple of job interviews.
In 2001, Google acquired the Dejanews archive. This was back in the
days when Google's slogan was 'Don't be evil', and for quite a long time
they were good stewards. But was time moved on, it wasn't kept up;
search was gradually enshittified, original headers and format
concealed, and gaps appeared in the archive.
More recently, complaints about spammers have been ignored, or
even worse, reportedly led to groups being dropped.
In the last month, rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.fandom, and some
other groups have been made unusable via GG due to a spammer
who robo-posts Thai language spam at the rate of several new threads
a minute, completely burying any real content.
Google has done nothing, though its imminent shutdown of GG will
prevent it leaking to the rest of usenet.
Its the spammer, not the shut down, that drove me from GG to
eternal-september a few weeks ago rather than today.
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.
pt

I came to usenet through Compuserve in 1996 ???
I assume that you are going to sign up for Eternal-September and use
Thunderbird as your news reader ?
Lynn

I came to usenet because someone said there was a new spiffy SF show
coming out, and its creator/primary writer was on this thing called
usenet. (Babylon 5, JMS) Since the B5 pilot was aired in Feb 1993, this
must have been late 1992. The B5 groups made me aware of this wonderful
group, which is the only one I've paid attention to for many years now.
Tony

I first got on the net in late 1978. I suspect I'm the fan with the
second longest continuous internet presence, preceded only by Keith
Lynch, who's still active over on r.a.sf.fandom.

Back then, the action was the SF-LOVERS mailing list, and later the
SF-LOVERS Digest, when the volume became too great for individual
messages.

This was long before any non-DOD funded activity was legal on
ARPANet, and SFL was sub-rosa for several years. It later got
permitted as an experiment in high volume mailing lists (this
was long before the web existed).

Usenet appeared after the TCP/IP internet was gatewayed with
Bitnet in the early 80s, and still remains active.

pt

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

Post by Cryptoengineer

Post by Tony Nance

Post by Lynn McGuire

Post by ***@gmail.com
Starting tomorrow, Google will no longer support new Usenet content.
This is probably the last post I will make through GG.
What a long strange trip its been. I've been on Usenet since the early 80s.
At that time, though certainly some people kept private archives, most
regarded Usenet content as ephemeral as toilet paper - once it aged off
your server, it was gone.
Those were the days when the most popular external storage medium
was the 1.44 Mb floppy, and hard drives cost big bucks. As we all know,
storage now approaches free, and you buy it by the Terabyte. That changed
things.
In 1995, Dejanews started offering the first web-accessible, public archives.
I recall a certain amount of gnashing of teeth, since now people could
be confronted with things they'd said years before. How right they were!
It actually happened to me in a couple of job interviews.
In 2001, Google acquired the Dejanews archive. This was back in the
days when Google's slogan was 'Don't be evil', and for quite a long time
they were good stewards. But was time moved on, it wasn't kept up;
search was gradually enshittified, original headers and format
concealed, and gaps appeared in the archive.
More recently, complaints about spammers have been ignored, or
even worse, reportedly led to groups being dropped.
In the last month, rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.fandom, and some
other groups have been made unusable via GG due to a spammer
who robo-posts Thai language spam at the rate of several new threads
a minute, completely burying any real content.
Google has done nothing, though its imminent shutdown of GG will
prevent it leaking to the rest of usenet.
Its the spammer, not the shut down, that drove me from GG to
eternal-september a few weeks ago rather than today.
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.
pt

I came to usenet through Compuserve in 1996 ???
I assume that you are going to sign up for Eternal-September and use
Thunderbird as your news reader ?
Lynn

I came to usenet because someone said there was a new spiffy SF show
coming out, and its creator/primary writer was on this thing called
usenet. (Babylon 5, JMS) Since the B5 pilot was aired in Feb 1993, this
must have been late 1992. The B5 groups made me aware of this wonderful
group, which is the only one I've paid attention to for many years now.
Tony

I first got on the net in late 1978. I suspect I'm the fan with the
second longest continuous internet presence, preceded only by Keith
Lynch, who's still active over on r.a.sf.fandom.
Back then, the action was the SF-LOVERS mailing list, and later the
SF-LOVERS Digest, when the volume became too great for individual
messages.
This was long before any non-DOD funded activity was legal on
ARPANet, and SFL was sub-rosa for several years. It later got
permitted as an experiment in high volume mailing lists (this
was long before the web existed).
Usenet appeared after the TCP/IP internet was gatewayed with
Bitnet in the early 80s, and still remains active.
pt

That's not quite accurate. USENET was originally transported over dial-up
modem links using a transfer program called "uucp" (Unix to Unix Copy Program).
TCP & NNTP came much later. I put usceast on Usenet sometime around 1981
I guess, and have been here since.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>
That's not quite accurate. USENET was originally transported over dial-up
modem links using a transfer program called "uucp" (Unix to Unix Copy Program).
TCP & NNTP came much later. I put usceast on Usenet sometime around 1981
I guess, and have been here since.

Yes. I still had uucp clients as late as the mid-2000s.
--scott
{well-connected-site}!inhp4!akgua!gatech!gitpyr!notavax!kludge

[Cryptoengineer]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>
That's not quite accurate. USENET was originally transported over dial-up
modem links using a transfer program called "uucp" (Unix to Unix Copy Program).
TCP & NNTP came much later. I put usceast on Usenet sometime around 1981
I guess, and have been here since.

Yes. I still had uucp clients as late as the mid-2000s.
--scott
{well-connected-site}!inhp4!akgua!gatech!gitpyr!notavax!kludge

Bangpaths! Those bring back memories...

pt

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>
That's not quite accurate. USENET was originally transported over dial-up
modem links using a transfer program called "uucp" (Unix to Unix Copy Program).
TCP & NNTP came much later. I put usceast on Usenet sometime around 1981
I guess, and have been here since.

Yes. I still had uucp clients as late as the mid-2000s.
--scott
{well-connected-site}!inhp4!akgua!gatech!gitpyr!notavax!kludge

Oh, you were out in the sticks, ...!munnari!grs. :-)

Cheers,
Gary B-)

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>
That's not quite accurate. USENET was originally transported over dial-up
modem links using a transfer program called "uucp" (Unix to Unix Copy

Program).

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>
TCP & NNTP came much later. I put usceast on Usenet sometime around 1981
I guess, and have been here since.

Yes. I still had uucp clients as late as the mid-2000s.
--scott
{well-connected-site}!inhp4!akgua!gatech!gitpyr!notavax!kludge

Oh, you were out in the sticks, ...!munnari!grs. :-)
Cheers,
Gary B-)

inhp4 was definitely on our path

Also, if we had incoming mail, you could use a bangpath that was shorter
because one of the sites could make long distance calls directly to
our modem, but for outgoing mail we had to use a long path because we
couldn't make outgoing long distance modem calls. Something like that
anyway..

[Christian Weisgerber]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>
That's not quite accurate. USENET was originally transported over dial-up
modem links using a transfer program called "uucp" (Unix to Unix Copy Program).
TCP & NNTP came much later. I put usceast on Usenet sometime around 1981
I guess, and have been here since.

Yes. I still had uucp clients as late as the mid-2000s.

If you're reading this, then it crossed a UUCP link on the way to you.
(Over TLS over TCP, nonetheless.)

[Tony Nance]

Post by ***@gmail.com
Starting tomorrow, Google will no longer support new Usenet content.
This is probably the last post I will make through GG.
What a long strange trip its been. I've been on Usenet since the early 80s.
At that time, though certainly some people kept private archives, most
regarded Usenet content as ephemeral as toilet paper - once it aged off
your server, it was gone.
Those were the days when the most popular external storage medium
was the 1.44 Mb floppy, and hard drives cost big bucks. As we all know,
storage now approaches free, and you buy it by the Terabyte. That changed
things.
In 1995, Dejanews started offering the first web-accessible, public archives.
I recall a certain amount of gnashing of teeth, since now people could
be confronted with things they'd said years before. How right they were!
It actually happened to me in a couple of job interviews.
In 2001, Google acquired the Dejanews archive. This was back in the
days when Google's slogan was 'Don't be evil', and for quite a long time
they were good stewards. But was time moved on, it wasn't kept up;
search was gradually enshittified, original headers and format
concealed, and gaps appeared in the archive.
More recently, complaints about spammers have been ignored, or
even worse, reportedly led to groups being dropped.
In the last month, rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.fandom, and some
other groups have been made unusable via GG due to a spammer
who robo-posts Thai language spam at the rate of several new threads
a minute, completely burying any real content.
Google has done nothing, though its imminent shutdown of GG will
prevent it leaking to the rest of usenet.
Its the spammer, not the shut down, that drove me from GG to
eternal-september a few weeks ago rather than today.
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.

Thanks for this history sketch, and congrats on the retirement!
- Tony

[Quadibloc]

Post by ***@gmail.com
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.

Incidentally, for those who would like a web-based interface
to USENET newsgroups, there's "Rock Solid Light" at

https://www.novabbs.com/

It only provides access to a limited number of text newsgroups,
divided into categories.

John Savard

[David Dalton]

Post by Quadibloc

Post by ***@gmail.com
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.

Incidentally, for those who would like a web-based interface
to USENET newsgroups, there's "Rock Solid Light" at
https://www.novabbs.com/
It only provides access to a limited number of text newsgroups,
divided into categories.
John Savard

Eternal September newsadmin Ray Banana is working on
an RSL interface to the Eternal September newsserver
and will hopefully announce it on eternal-september.support
soon, and that would provide access to more newsgroups
than NovaBBS.

[Blueshirt]

Post by David Dalton
Eternal September newsadmin Ray Banana is working on
an RSL interface to the Eternal September newsserver
and will hopefully announce it on eternal-september.support
soon, and that would provide access to more newsgroups
than NovaBBS.

Web based Usenet access will evolve now I think.

[D]

Post by Blueshirt

Post by David Dalton
Eternal September newsadmin Ray Banana is working on
an RSL interface to the Eternal September newsserver
and will hopefully announce it on eternal-september.support
soon, and that would provide access to more newsgroups
than NovaBBS.

Web based Usenet access will evolve now I think.

And with web based usenet, so will spam.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by D

Post by Blueshirt
Web based Usenet access will evolve now I think.

And with web based usenet, so will spam.

Yes, but most admins don't have a problem dealing with spammers because they
are not trying to operate everything completely hands-off the way Google was.
And now, thanks to Google's uncontrolled spam problem, most sites have very
effective filtering systems in place. So I think we will see an increase in
spam attempts but I predict it will be dealt with effectively.
--scott

[Blueshirt]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by D

Post by Blueshirt
Web based Usenet access will evolve now I think.

And with web based usenet, so will spam.

Yes, but most admins don't have a problem dealing with spammers
because they are not trying to operate everything completely
hands-off the way Google was. And now, thanks to Google's
uncontrolled spam problem, most sites have very effective
filtering systems in place. So I think we will see an increase in
spam attempts but I predict it will be dealt with effectively.

Yes. The war with spam isn't going to end just because Google Groups
are no longer a gateway to Usenet. There will always be people who
get their jollies from trying to spam Usenet, from whatever source.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Blueshirt
Yes. The war with spam isn't going to end just because Google Groups
are no longer a gateway to Usenet. There will always be people who
get their jollies from trying to spam Usenet, from whatever source.

But there won't be any people trying to spam Usenet in order to poison
search engines. And there won't be any people trying to send tens of
millions of spam messages a day.
--scott

[Dimensional Traveler]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Blueshirt
Yes. The war with spam isn't going to end just because Google Groups
are no longer a gateway to Usenet. There will always be people who
get their jollies from trying to spam Usenet, from whatever source.

But there won't be any people trying to spam Usenet in order to poison
search engines. And there won't be any people trying to send tens of
millions of spam messages a day.

ROFLMAO. If anything because it will be web based there will be even
more attempts to "poison" search engines because that is a normal part
of a web environment. And it won't be individual cranks, it will be
companies.

[D]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by D

Post by Blueshirt
Web based Usenet access will evolve now I think.

And with web based usenet, so will spam.

Yes, but most admins don't have a problem dealing with spammers because they
are not trying to operate everything completely hands-off the way Google was.
And now, thanks to Google's uncontrolled spam problem, most sites have very
effective filtering systems in place. So I think we will see an increase in
spam attempts but I predict it will be dealt with effectively.
--scott

That is a good point!

[Blueshirt]

Post by Quadibloc

Post by ***@gmail.com
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.

Incidentally, for those who would like a web-based interface
to USENET newsgroups, there's "Rock Solid Light" at
https://www.novabbs.com/

Now that GG has de-peered from Usenet I expect to see more people in
the community work on web based Usenet interfaces... there wasn't
much need while Google Groups was around but now I think we'll see a
few alternative options for those that prefer a website interface to
a newsreader for Usenet access.

[Robert Carnegie]

Post by Quadibloc

Post by ***@gmail.com
GG has been very useful to me, since it could get through my
employer's firewall, unlike NNTP. Now I'm retired, and can use
NNTP again from home. I'll miss GG, even though I
easily concede that its interface has become terrible.

Incidentally, for those who would like a web-based interface
to USENET newsgroups, there's "Rock Solid Light" at
https://www.novabbs.com/
It only provides access to a limited number of text newsgroups,
divided into categories.
John Savard

I must remember not to tell someone who
was asking for this.