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Google Flips Back to Groups Beta (Again)
afabbro writes "Google backed off its beta of Google Groups within 24 hours of making it mandatory for all users. You may recall that its lack of features (date searches), unwanted features (e-mail masking), and clunky user interface met with a very chilly reception here. Unfortunately, as of December 5th, Google Groups Beta is back and you can't get to the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore. Be sure to share your opinion with Google."
... date limited searches are back on the "Advanced Search" page! Woohoo! That was the show stopper for me. Other than that, its nearly all cosmetic changes, and I don't care about those.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
- groups.google.com goes to the original interface, not to the beta.
- Following a link to the beta shows that you can now easily search a date range.
Not that Hemos could have, you know, looked before posting this...What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You can get close to the old format.
Click on a group, then at the top of the messages, click on 'Viewing titles only'. This removes all the text and gives you just a listing of all message titles.
Now insides of a message goto the top, and just above first message you will see a link of 'view as tree'. It still is missing the previous,next links at the bottom. Also it does not have that bar along the side of the tree showing you which messages are in the other frame.
If you read it, it looks like they are really aiming it at the LCD, with key segments like:
Then again, most press releases are written with their intended audience being 6-year olds. "Ford Motor Company Inc. makes cars! Vroom vrooom! Beep beep! Ford cars!"
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
For one thing, it breaks PGP signatures. May be minor, but it *can* be irritating.
Unfortunately, as of December 5th, Google Groups Beta is back and you can't get to the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore. just visit any regional Google Groups, like groups.google.ch and you can still use the old interface.
On occasion, it can be very useful to try and contact somebody that had a similar problem, but a while ago. (ie, the thread is long since inactive)
And I doubt that hiding those emails will have much practical impact on getting less spam. (people often use NOSPAM type emails anyway)
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
If you don't like the new itnerface, just use it with a country code domain rather than .com. I've checked the UK, Canadian, French, German, and Australian versions, and all have the classic interface, rather than the new one.
Frankly, that's 'cause you weren't thinking when you copied that URL. The best way to link to a particular Usenet post on Google has always been to link directly to the message ID, like so. It's almost always shorter than whatever it was you had above, and it takes you right to the correct article, without fail, even now...
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
> > Usenet is public domain
> No. It isn't. Nothing is public domain unless put there by its copyright holder,
> or by the expiry of its copyright.
While its true the posts are not public domain, and technically are copyrighted, the authors already granted permission for the usenet network to reproduce the messages and distribute them to usenet clients, simply by willingly posting them.
So google, acting as a usenet carrier/server, has the permission to do this.
Additionally, as long as the people using clients do not reproduce the works outside of usenet, they have the right to obtain and archive the messages as well already (copyright never prevented that)
So google could even charge for this service legally.
I'm glad they choose not to though.
OK, before anyone else posts ill-informed rubbish, please go back and read the previous thread, where this argument was done to death. For those who can't be bothered, here's the executive summary:
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You can see the email address in Google Groups if you click on the 'Reply to Author' link.
Don't know if you noticed, but /. ate the email addresses you tried to embed inside angle brackets in your post.