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."

Comments

This is great because it's Google

[Real Troll Talk]

Nothing was greater than when Google bought out Delphi and took over the largest USENET archive of all-time.

Google always does things the right way without ruining the user experience or their wallets.

In Google We Trust...

(P.S. I have three Gmail invites anyone up for one -- I already gave away 5 to friends/family?)

Re:This is great because it's Google

[1u3hr]

Nothing was greater than when Google bought out Delphi and took over the largest USENET archive of all-time. Google always does things the right way without ruining the user experience or their wallets.

Actually, the original dejanews was better (before they got desperate and tried to become a portal). They respected the referrers headers and had largely correct threading. Google lumps all posts together with the same "Subject:" header, even if they're years apart. Also deja wouldn't let you respond to an old message (a month, I think), whereas I often see people who've obviously found a post with a Google search and responded to it, not noticing that it's a few years old.

Also, Google has picked up some groups on servers like Adobe.com and presents them as if they were normal newsgroups. However, they're not, and though Google lets you make a post to them, no one will answwer becasue they only see those posted via Adobe.

I'm not really happy that Google is blending their own groups with Usenet. Too many already can't tell the difference between web forums and Usenet.

Old news...

[sH4RD]

I read about this a couple weeks ago. What took it so long to appear on Slashdot? (maybe I should have submitted it :P) Anyhow, an improvement over Google Groups, but I almost LIKE the older, lighter version.

Re:Promising yet limited...

[LostCluster]

On the other hand, Google seems to be in the business of only getting into things they can be #1 at doing.... it's quite possible that Google Groups will become the most read of such discussion sites after this goes live.

Besides, I'm sure all of these Groups will be completely included in Google's index, while Yahoo! Groups and Delphi Forums and other such sites are not because they usually require a signon to see most of the content.

There's a Slashdot Google Groups Beta already -

[Real Troll Talk]

Look what the cat drug in -> New Slashdot Google group.

Click here to join it or this About: link to read more about it.

Google is losing its main draw: SIMPLICITY.

[Qweezle]

As Google keeps expanding, they are looking more and more like a simplified Yahoo!.

Will Google put people off by losing the one thing that made them extremely individual in the big wide world of web search engines/portals?

Re:Gmail

[LostCluster]

Not true...

Blogger, AdWords, and AdSense accounts don't work there, yet...

Where'd I put that post?

[LqqkOut]

One can even create new groups, although they aren't actual Usenet groups.

Many of my troubleshooting questions start with a Google web search that doesn't answer the question, and end with informative usenet threads that were left dangling months (sometimes years) ago. It would be great to have a combined google search/usenet engine so I could easily add to the collective knowledge pool (while in turn extending the livelihood of the revered ancestors of forums and discussion groups like /.)

Would this place too much burden on the usenet servers and open up new doors for mass abuse, or would the greater access extend the richness of usenet to provide more answers that might not be worthy enough to appear on someone's website?

Embrace and extend?

[gmuslera]

From where i hear that of having the monopoly of something enables you to extend it in more directions?

If it were Microsoft i would be very scared, but, well, is Google, with a good story of openness (i.e. google API), doing things well, and getting their virtual "monopoly" doing things well, not with vapourware or doing dirty tricks to make people not follow the competence, not even limiting people on choosing the competence.

Bah.

[jhesse]

I can make a *real* newsgroup. Ph33R M3!

(It's not rocket science. You just have to know the right codes to put in a newsgroup post.)

Re:Gmail

[JWSmythe]

Actually, Gmail's spam filtering isn't all that great. I've been forwarding all my regular account's mail to my gmail account, and it misses about 3:10 messages that my mail server catches with SpamAssassin and SpamCop as the only blacklist. But hey, it's better than the other free services.

Re:Great. Whats next?

[P. Norbert Ebersol]

How odd that I noticed this earlier in the day. Slashdot is slower than my own curiosity these days. For Shame.

I had personally sent an email a few weeks back suggesting they merge gmail with groups to some extent. Bring back the glory days of dejanews.

In fact, what is google missing nowadays when it comes to search?

A telephone name and reverse lookup type system would be nice. yahoo has one of those I think, but it sucks. I'm sure if google were to provide one it would be fairly straightforward

It'd be nice if google also provided babelfish.altavista.com type services. too bad google cant just buy altavista.

a simple weather report would also be something other search engines have that google doesnt.

what else is google missing that a good information search service should or could have?

Re:Single Signon... coming soon to Google.

[DAldredge]

Notice how when you go to gmail.com it redirects you to gmail.google.com? They do that so they can read cookies from *.google.com.

That's tracking :->

Re:Google, Deja, and thread continuity

[danharan]

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.

Doing it by title alone would be treacherous... but then people quote each other and threads tend to be clustered around in time. That should be a relatively straightforward task.

better updating

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using the beta version for a week. The main difference is that instead of having newsgroups updated twice a day, they are now updated instantly.

G$$gle

[Lifix]

With google approaching its IPO, I have little doubt that more of google's services (groups directories) and web utilities (google bar / google button) will undergo "improvements." These improvements will certainly change the services and make them more commercial. We have seen gmail, which is, as far as I am concerned, the most commercial implementation of any free e-mail service (advertising based on keywords in e-mail).

Google has brought us a great search engine, and a great set of tools. I am a firm believer in their services and products, despite the commercial implementations. One of google's guiding principals has been "do no evil" and we can only hope that this principal stays the same once google becomes public. Just my $.02. I will of course continue using google every day.

Improved searching?

[macdaddy]

I hope they improve the searching options a bit. I regularly search NANAS or NANAE (new.admin.net-abuse.sightings/email) for a domain I suspect of spamming. Unfortunately the period is ommited from the search strings, so a search for spammer.com also matches notaspammer.net and huntdownandflogspammers.org. I would love full regex abilities. I'd actually pay for good Google Groups access.

Who owns the content?

[Hans Lehmann]

...although they aren't actual Usenet groups."

That's the part that worries me. I typed my first Usenet post over ten years ago, shortly after getting my first internet account (yeah, I know, I was on AOL, but we were all young and stupid once.) What struck me about Usenet was the properties that I soon learned applied to the Internet as a whole: Nobody owns Usenet or its content, nobody can easily regulate or censor Usenet, and Usenet tends to find its way around any distruptions in service (since it's not all stored on one giant server.) One day DajaNews started collecting and saving Usenet posts, making them available through their web site. I found that idea disturbing, sort of like when I saw my first Canter & Segal spam. I quickly realized, however, that given enough disk space and bandwidth I too could archive all the chatter and discourse that is Usenet, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop me. Usenet discussions could theoretically be made immune to virtual book burning.

DejaNews was eventually bought by Google, which continues to archive most of the non-binary groups, as well as provide a web-based portal to Usenet. It does not, however, have the only copy of Usenet. Other companies like Yahoo, Delphi, ( and even Slashdot) have created their own user group systems, accessable only from their servers, and viewable only with a web browser (after all, what good is the Internet if you can't put banner ads on it?) If you don't like the way that your newsreader sorts & displays, you can get a different one, or even write your own. If you don't like the spam posts that Delphi weaves among regular ones, or the spam page that they present to you before allowing you to see a group, tough sh*t. You'll read Delphi postings the way they want you to , or you won't read them at all. If Delphi goes belly up, all their archived posts could go to the highest bidder, or maybe just disappear completely.

Google has always worn the white hats, so far. If they become as popular with these groups that "aren't actual Usenet groups." as they've gotten with their search engine, what happens if Usenet slowly dissappears when everyone jumps on the Googler bandwagon? What happens if this central database, owned by a single company, is no longer freely accessable?

BTW, I highly recommend GigaNews Usenet service. I've used them for about 5 years now; good consistant service, & they never tried to pull anything sneaky.

Can also use news aggregator with groups beta

[mpn14tech]

The nice thing about the google groups beta is that you can track your favorite usenet group using a news aggregator that supports atom.

The only downside I have found is when you select the article you do not get an option to view the article in context like you get if you are doing an ordinary search. Hopefully they will fix that.

Re:Google, Deja, and thread continuity

[afabbro]

I have generally been very unsatisfied with Google's treatment of the old DejaNews. As you mention, their threading is pretty weak. And they have none of the "MyDeja" (or whatever it was called) features, such as thread tracking/bookmarking, etc. There is no way to say "I want to watch this thread" (other than bookmarking it yourself). It's been so long since Deja's been gone that I don't remember all the features, but I remember the Google change as rather jarring.

Of course, neither Google nor Deja provide the crucial killfile feature. Of the dozen or so newsgroups I regularly read, there is probably a crank in each I'd like to just never see again (in the filtering, not homicidal sense ;)

Sigh...anyone know a good USENET provider (without having to get an NNTP feed)? My network link is business DSL so I don't get any NNTP from my provider, nor do I really feel like running innd here.

What I'd really like is something like a web-based tin/trn ;)

address mangling sucks

[Jamie Zawinski]

I just sent this to groups-support@google.com:

Please don't mangle email addresses in Google Groups!

I guess you are doing this because of some misguided belief that it will help with spam, but really all it does is decrease the utility of the internet as a communications medium. I do not hide my email address because I want people to be able to contact me, and the new Google Groups beta destroys the email addresses that I quite intentionally put in my messages. This is bad. Please don't do it.

Here's what the old way looked like: (old way)
And here's the new way: (new way)

What I consider bugs in the new way are:

1. destruction of email addresses in From, Sender, etc headers;

2. destruction of email addresses in the message body;

3. destruction of message IDs in the headers (because sometimes message IDs look like email addresses, you mangle them -- even though it's guarenteed that no email addresses will ever appear in the References or Message-ID headers.)

4. that the returned document is of type text/html instead of type text/plain. It was a good feature of the old system that the "Original Format" link returned a plain text version of the original, tabs and all. Sometimes you want to get at the message as it was actually posted, and not at some marked up approximation thereof.

Other than that, it looks very nice!

Re:Google, Deja, and thread continuity

[Malc]

I seem to remember that Deja New's interface was frustratingly sluggish, yet it was a better interface to use than groups.google.com. This new thing from Google just doesn't work for me. It's too verbose. Then again, perhaps that's because I'm used to a real NNTP client that only display headers until I want to look furhter. There doesn't appear to be an option with this new interface to get rid of the message bodies and just show headers... although really, I would like to see a threaded view of headers. It's so much easier to skip over what you don't want if you display threaded headers only.

Re:Gmail

[AKAImBatman]

While I like having a gmail account and use it occassionally, I do prefer to stick with my standard pop account, logging in and out of google can be quite frustrating.

Who logs in? I just leave GMail up all the time. If a new message arrives, the title of the Tab (or browser) will show "GMail (1)". I've also made http://gmail.google.com a toolbar link for those rare occasions that I have to restart my browser.

Re:Promising yet limited...

[CaptainTux]

I wouldn't rule out the idea that google is trying to become the "new" usenet here, and I actually believe they could pull it off.

As a supporting example, I know at least 30-40 people who have told me "Oh, I read this thing on Google Groups" to which I sometimes replied "Yeah, Usenet can be great" and their response is "What is Usenet? This was on Google!"

Google is doing to Usenet what MS has done to the whole OS concept for a lot of people. Many people don't even realize there *are* other operating systems aside from MS Windows. In this case, many people don't realize there is a seperation between Google and Usenet. They don't understand that all Google does is provide an interface to a *much* older network that has been around since before many of them were even born. *That* my friends is strong branding. Google might not be muddying the waters on purpose but it's still pretty scary isn't it?

Re:Single Signon... coming soon to Google.

[huge]

- Passport sucks because they are Big Brother and they track you from site to site.
[...]
- Google rocks because they don't maintain a massive customer-tracking database

And you base this assumption on what?

Feel a bit disappointed

[nandu_prahlad]

I tried registering into Google groups, with my yahoo email id about 5 times and I was refused. The sixth time I tried my workplace id (non-hotmail or yahoo) and I got an account immediately.

There was news sometime back how about hotmail and yahoo were blocking gmail invites.It's what you would expect an ordinary, run-of-the-mill multi-billion dollar company to do.

Kudos to Google for a great UI. But I feel a bit disappointed.

Re:How about their core business?

[NisJ�rgensen]

Interesting to see this popping up in the Netherlands again.

A Dutch colleague of mine had contracted a "Search Engine Optimization" company to help improve his search engine ranking. One of their suggestions was the creation of such "doorway pages" (but at a lot less sophisticated level - they seemed to be technically incompetent as well). I advised him to avoid implementing their suggestions, partially after reading the "terms" of Google - which says that they consider this "cheating".

I just looked at the site of zeilvaart and the pages do not seem obviously fake. Indeed, some of them seem to contain information relating to the title (for instance "Engeland Zeilen". This may be why Google is not reacting to the complains.

But the structure of the site does seem very strange indeed.

I guess this is the case of a smart SEO, as opposed to the stupid one I experienced.