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.

Comments

Re:New name?

[option8]

steve martin. man with two brains, the. 1983.

what's my prize?
(and no, i didn't have to look it up on google)

Deja-google

[KFury]

The feeling you've seen this before...

Kevin Fox

Re:Will Google's philosophy survive the merger?

[swordgeek]

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.

New name?

[SpanishInquisition]

Degle or Gooja?

This, quite frankly, sucks.

[elbuddha]

[rant]

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...

• So much for browsing newsgroups: Google does not currently support browsing of the newsgroup hierarchy. Look for more complete browsing support as well as other new features to be available in future versions of our newsgroup search service.
• So much for reading new messages as they come in: The archive is currently updated once per day. There may be a delay of up to 36 hours between articles being posted to a news server and those articles being searchable within Google's newsgroup search.

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.

I hope this is a Good Thing (tm)

[Patrick McRotch]

I'm sure most Linux users can attribute to the fact that Google and Deja are the most useful resources available to Linux users on the 'net. I, for one cannot begin to describe how helpful a Google/Linux search or a Deja usenet search was to me when I was looking for help with a more obscure function of Linux or trying to find a Linux driver for a new peripheral. Both of these sites are also an amazing resourse for Linux newbies, due to the sheer volume of information available.

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.

Re:What about pre-95?

[King Babar]

[...] what do you think the odds of Google acquiring such data are?

Gah. I'm not the type to flame somebody for their grammar, but good god... What kind of sentence is this? What you thinking were?

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:

1. The odds of Google acquiring such data are small.
2. I think the odds of Google acquiring such data are small.
3. Do you think the odds of Google acquiring such data are small or large?
4. What do you think the odds of Google acquiring such data are?

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.

What about pre-95?

[sconeu]

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?

Google uses lots of advertising

[yerricde]

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?

Security?

[pallex]

I like the way my password is part of the url when i log on now!

This is a good thing

[Mr_Silver]

Having been pipped to the post by Ergo2000:

• 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.

--

Confidence booster

[gus goose]

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.