Slashdot Mirror
New Google Groups in Beta
qwe writes "Google has apparently launched a new version of their Google Groups, currently in beta. It looks a lot like Gmail. One can attach a star to message threads. One can even create new groups, although they aren't actual Usenet groups."
And if you have a Gmail account you already have a login for the Google groups.
And Orkut too, btw.
I've generally been pretty satisfied with Google's treatment of the old Dejanews archive. Dejanews was *great* while it existed. You didn't have to be "registered" to post to USEnet in the early stages of its existence, the "author profile" feature was always really fun, and it featured well-thought-out article tracking and thread handling. Deja.com was something else entirely (one of the strangest company metamorphosis ever, really) yet the few months post-Deja and pre-Google were really nightmarish--I didn't realize what a resource Usenet archives could be until they weren't around.
Google's first version of "Groups" was very bare-bones, yet while its innovations were sound--in particular, Google's search function was far superior, and its extended-to-early-1980s-archive was a delight--it dropped several features that made Dejanews so much fun. And while Google insisted that it was going to gradually revamp its Groups UI, it never really did so.
Google's big holdout (and one which they apparently were originally intending to fix back in Groups' early days) was its inefficient sorting system. Groups has a quirk/bug that Deja managed to avoid: simply put, threads with like-titles are "merged together" in the "view thread" interface, despite not necessarily having anything to do with each other. Say you're searching for information, and it comes up in a thread called "The Beatles on tape." You click on the "View thread" button. In the left pane will be a huge list of responses. But most will likely not be related to the discussion at hand, as Google throws all threads ever titled "The Beatles on tape" into that list. Deja would intelligently organize by article ID, generally preventing that sort of thing from happening, but Google never bothered to fix that design quirk despite promises to the contrary.
From the look of the new Groups, it appears as if Google's trying to create an odd synthesis between Yahoo Groups and Usenet. I certainly hope they don't forget that providing a well-thought-out Usenet interface should be priority #1, with Yahoo-esque bells-and-whistles as a secondary concern.
You do know that "Google Groups" is actually just a front end for USENET, and that USENET predates Google.com by about 15 years?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
you mean like this or like this?
or perhaps a translation tool?
try these too.
May 13.
Anyways, I have tested a few google groups, its an odd combination of usenet and yahoo groups. Not planning on doing much with them unless google adds more features.