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Google Acquires Deja
Ergo2000 was the first of many to
tell us that Google has acquired Deja. Or at least, whats left of it. Accoding to the announcement,
they will reinstate posting, improve searching, and keep the full
500 million message archive since '95 online.
[Note: This is all in the link.]
NOOO!!! It is only with the declining popularity of the Usenet that many of the more egregious trolls and spammers have left (freqently to Slashdot). In many groups these days, the signal to noise ratio is back up to the pre-september that never ended days, especially since your average AOL user doesn't even know newsgroups exist anymore (not with that shiny pretty web thing to play with).
I much prefer the way Usenet is heading now, where you have to be at least a little savvy before you even find out about the Usenet.
It is really too bad that so many people were turned off of the usenet entirely a few years ago when the S/N ratio hit rock bottom, they could really help get the Usenet back to the way it should be.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
DejaGoo
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One of the few downsides I can think of to Deja[News] becoming groups.google.com is that all of the old links to specific messages on deja.com no longer work. (For instance, if you knew the Deja ID number of a Usenet post, you could provide a URL and link directly to it.) All internal links to deja.com now seem to point to the front page of groups.google.com.
I guess people that practiced direct linking to Deja's archive are SOL for now -- the message ID URLs seem to be different.
Interestingly, Google's beta help page says that they've been archiving Usenet themself since August 2000...
The way I see it, Google really only gets two major things out of this:
- Stuff like trademark, domain registration, existing marketshare/userbase, etc.
- The database (interestingly, anyone with foresight and a lot of storage, could have built up a comparable one)
As for the software or the staff, I don't see why they would care. Everyone agrees that Dejanews has been pretty shitty to use. Writing a decent interface shouldn't be a big deal, even for one single programmer. Whatever programmers created Google, can easily handle this.BTW, since we're all fantasizing about Dejanews changes, you know what would be really cool? An NNTP interface. They could even sell feeds. Imagine having a feed where nothing ever expires...
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm not counting my checkens yet. 'Stupid portalness' seems to be a disease that comes with age. AltaVista used to be pure, then went the portal route. The same goes for Lycos, Inktomi, and Infoseek.
We'll see how Google goes about creating a profit model, but I loved Deja and yet they had to downsize and eventually sell themselves out, so it remains to be seen if Google will do something icky and commercial to avoid the same fate.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
DejaGoogs.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Did you even bother to read hit the link or view the press release, or were you just in a hurry to post a Catz-esque rant? I don't want to come across here as overly aggressive, but either you didn't bother to read a single thing about this topic, or you're trolling.
I was thinking more along the lines of Hfuhruhurr. Nearly as comprehensible while reasonably approximating that classic "Usenet sound".
(Bonus points for the reference. I guess it would be topical to use Google to seek out the answer. Hint: Uumellmahaye.)
But there is reason for some optimism -- all the companies you mention went the portal route during those dark days of the late '90s when everyone on the Web suddenly wanted to be a portal-type-thing -- anyone with friends in marketing remember the brief flowering of the "vortal" idea?
I think that we might finally be past that particular nightmarish carnival of terror.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Deja is bought by someone with clue!! This makes my day. No more stupid portal stuff, but an essential resource back online. Yes!
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I think it's high time we get a new web-based usenet leader, and judging from Google's beta, I don't think they're going to be it. That's not a bad thing, mind you, they're already a great web search engine. That said, I propose the following challenge:
An opensource-based Deja-like setup funded by a single ad atop each page. I have no doubts that the slashcoders could easily set this up and perhaps some startup funding could come from Andover, if not from rich-as-all-get-out Rob Malda. Granted, it would be hard to get archives, but why not start clean? Would be bad for those wanting to search right off the bat, but time moves on fast enough. I think the community can do this! Give'er Hell, folks!
Their goal is to turn a profit. They are not a clan of monks who roam the countryside giving backrubs and writing search engines. Money makes the world go round and if you pulled your head out of your bag of granola for a few minutes you would see this.
p.s. evil is as evil does
- Toby
I don't know about the legal stuff, but Google has been a shining light among internet search engines.
The don't "wrap" their page around the searched page (e.g. Ask Jeeves)
They haven't lost their search functions amid a useless stream of portal "features" (e.g. Excite)
They are fast, fast, fast!
Their "I'm feeling lucky" option can sometimes introduce the user to new areas of the web that you never would have discovered on your own (and it doesn't seem to send you to pr0n sites inadvertently which is a nice feature here at work).
They didn't buckle under to the pressure and try to manually override their site after that "GWBush is a f-ing idiot" link issue last month. Nevertheless, this type of highjacking of a search seems to be very, very rare.
A quick test for "codewarrior" in their newsgroup search returned the first 10 of 10,000 responses in less than a second over my 36.6 connection.
If they can incorporate Deja with this level of expertice, I will be completely impressed. I don't think I've ever said that about an web company before.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
This and the AdWords program are text-based advertising that has "an average clickthrough rate 4-5 times higher than industry standard for banner ads" according to the Google advertising overview.
I've used Google adwords since it came out and was really surprised that it actually works. For the money they charge (around $15 cpm, lower if your ad appears in the second or third slot), what is essentially "just another banner ad" has given clickthroughs of up to 8%. The industry standard, by contrast is about half of a percent.
My guess though is that the reason adwords works is not because it's targeted or unobtrusive or any of the reasons they tout, but rather simply because it's a variation on the norm. Banner clickthrough rates were pretty good back when people were utterly fascinated by an animated gif. Then when you were able to interact with the ad people became interested again (punch the monkey, anyone?).
Of course people quickly become desensitized to every new advertising gimmick. Google adwords will most likely go the same way.
Here's a few places to look, though I don't know how much you'll find:
t /i ndex.html
s t/ newsgroup_archives.html
Archive for the History of Usenet Mailing list
http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Usenet.His
Where is the archive for newsgroup X? (an index)
http://www.pitt.edu/~grouprev/Usenet/Archive-Li
Archives of moderated newsgroups (not working when I tried):
ftp://ftp.sterling.com/moderators/Archives.html
Wouldn't that be the feeling you've searched this before?
Not to be confused with Deja-ogle, which... umm, nevermind.
steve martin. man with two brains, the. 1983.
what's my prize?
(and no, i didn't have to look it up on google)
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
The feeling you've seen this before...
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Deja hasn't always been a bloated "portal." When they were DejaNews, they were fairly sleek. Then after selling off their non-usenet bit to ebay, they got moderately sleek again.
At any rate, Google has already stated they'll bring back the archives ASAP (maybe already have?). Furthermore, this wasn't a merger--it was a BUYOUT. Google owns Deja now, and they'll be able to set it up however they want.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Degle or Gooja?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Google's interface for web searches is _useless_ for usenet.
Couldn't they keep the existing Deja functionality until they had something decent to offer? I can't believe how completely un-sympathetic to the needs of existing Deja users this sudden, and obviously not-at-all-thought-out, gutting of Deja is on the part of Google. I like Google, put they can't just shove Deja into their existing format and structure, leaving out 90% of the previous functionality, and expect everyone to just roll with it. And from what I could tell from the FAQ they have no real plans on making it any better anytime in the relatively near future. Quoting from the FAQ...
The least Google could have done is gotten their shit straight _before_ pulling this half-assed stunt.
[/rant]
I guess its back to real usenet servers and clients for me. I feel sorry for those that don't have access to a real usenet server, until Google gets its act straight on this.
Sadly, I don't see this buyout as a Good Thing (tm) for the open source movement. In the past year or so, I have seen the quality of both Google and Deja decrease immensly. Google's deal with Yahoo has decreased the accuracy of search results, and Google's interests seem to be turning towards profit rather than accuracy. Deja has been demonstrating similar signs that they are "selling out". Linux, and open source in general is supposed to be "by the geeks, for the geeks" and with this trend towards consolidation, and corporate profiteering, I am concerned that these two once respectable sites are losing site of their once-noble goal, and becoming unable to relate to the average Linux user.
This is a question for...PSYCHOLINGUIST MAN!
To be completely serious, this is a perfectly grammatical sentence. Indeed, I think it would make my Good Buddy Robert Kluender beam with joy. Now, is this kind of thing a piece of cake to parse? No way: it has what we experts call an unbounded wh-dependency. Indeed, our willingness to torture^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htest undergraduates with stuff like this is why we make the big bucks.
Now, to prove to you that this sentence is legit, consider the following:
Does this help any? Now, the real interesting question is why people would tend to say (4) above as What do you think the odds are of Google acquiring such data? But I have office hours in five minutes, so that question will have to wait for another day. ;-)
To make this just remotely related to the topic of search engines and Usenet, I'll point out that long distance dependencies like this one are the kind of thing that can make it infuriatingly difficult to use easy cues like "lack of proximity" to decide that two search terms are truly unrelated to each other. Unfortunately, solving this one requires you to parse natural language as it is used on Usenet, which is truly a frightening thought.
Babar
I remember the hue and cry when Deja announced that they were dropping the pre-95 stuff. Is there an archive of the stuff from the late 80's to 95 available, and if so, what do you think the odds of Google acquiring such data are?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
They don't even use advertising ontheir site?
Yes they do, just not annoying advertising. Try typing airlinesinto Google. You get two sponsored links. This and the AdWords program are text-based advertising that has "an average clickthrough rate 4-5 times higher than industry standard for banner ads" according to the Google advertising overview.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I like the way my password is part of the url when i log on now!
- 2001-02-12 16:30:09 Google acquires Deja's Usenet Service (articles,news) (rejected)
(bah) I'd like to say that this is definately a good thing. I use Deja a lot because I don't have decent Newgroup access at work and I've found many problems with the site over the last 6 months:- News articles that have disappeared
- Huge gaps in postings (often space of several months)
- Pointless "innovations" - like that annoying product link
- Damaged links (where you click on message 2 of a thread and end up in a totally different thread)
- Increasingly slower site access (advert overload anyone)
as well as the really annoying problem where once in a while all the postings go flat (rather than threaded) and it marks all the postings as new even when I read them 7 weeks ago.What I hope Google don't do is just rebrand it, bolt on a little bit of additional code and be done with it. I personally think it needs a good clean up with much of the crap removed.
What I also hope is that Google do it fast, because at the moment I don't seem to be able to access anything but my my-deja email, which is only used to let me avoid the spam from the harvesters.
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Google is by no means an innocent and fully open engine, but they have made many quality decisions. Taking on Deja has to be considdered an overwhelming accomplishment. There is simply no way for any other party to supercede this. Essentially, Google has the Usenet Monopoly.
What Google must now do differently is to re-create the hype that Usenet was before the fancy graphics of web pages. The only way to do this is to get more awareness out there for usenet.
I wish them the best.
But for now, I wish I could search usenet for perl right now, and use threads.
.. if only.