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Google's 20-Year Usenet Timeline

theRG writes "Google just released its 20-Year Usenet Timeline. Among the highlights: First Mac rumor, first 'me too' post, Tim Berners-Lee's announcement of the Web, and Linus' announcement of Linux."

18 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. Broken link by AnuradhaRatnaweera · · Score: 2, Informative

    The link "Stallman's announcement of GNU" is broken. It reports that "there is no group named net.usoft.".

    1. Re:Broken link by piquadratCH · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can find it here

  2. Just Released???? by Jack+Porter · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's been over 3 years since this page went up!

    From the linked page:

    11 Dec 2001 Google offers 20-year Usenet Archive

  3. Stallman's announcement of GNU by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Informative


    The link 'Sep 1983 Stallman's announcement of GNU' doesn't appear to work, but if you search google groups for '771@mit-eddie.UUCP' you can find it.

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  4. Publication Date???? by sljgh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Clearly no one saw the 2003 at the bottom of the page.

  5. Re:VT100 by Hakubi_Washu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just get opera, swap your pageview (CSS) to "Nostalgia" and live the c64 ! :-P

  6. Googles Usenet search is really really bad. by BrookHarty · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been using usenet since 89, seen many different usenet programs and web interfaces. Just for the heck of it, I tried to search some old amiga/commodore groups, and early fido/bbs groups, what a lack of searchs. I did some searchs back before google took over, and Deja had those posts, google seems to be missing information.

    Search by reverse date is missing.
    Threaded and hourly view is missing, too much crap on the screen.
    Side bars in the way. (Again more crap)

    Pretty much, I browse a few groups, but with perlmonks and other major discussion groups going to forums and leaving usenet, its more of a legacy I still enjoy than can use.

    Always wished people using bbforums would have an archived usenet feed just to keep a history. Also you dont need to belong to the forum.

    I feel forum's killed usenet, and forums are rather weak.
    How many forums are you on? Slashdot and about 6 dozen more.

    While im glad Google has taken over, I wish they could at least make a forum interface that doesnt suck.

  7. Re:This has been around for a while... by TrevorB · · Score: 4, Informative

    And even then, it was old news.

    The last item on the list behind the link:

    11 Dec 2001 Google offers 20-year Usenet Archive

    Which makes this story not only a dupe, but 3 years old as well...

    If we keep this up we'll start seeing dupe John Katz posts any time now.

  8. Re:Huh? by 787style · · Score: 2, Informative

    Except that Google Posts a link to the timeline on the usenet back in 2001. It's old news. Nothing to see here, move along.
    http://groups-beta.google.com/group/google.public. support.general/msg/d88f36fb3e2c0aac

  9. Re:This has been around for a while... by Lally+Singh · · Score: 1, Informative

    I think the difference is that the old article mentioned that google news has 20 years of data, but this one links to a timeline page. Related, closely, but still different.

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  10. Re:The new google groups by polyiguana · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Canadians have it for now.

  11. Re:This has been around for a while... by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Informative
    I think the difference is that the old article mentioned that google news has 20 years of data, but this one links to a timeline page. Related, closely, but still different.

    No, the timeline featured in today's dupe was also linked in the old post. Same page: http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announc e_20.html both times.

  12. Re:Such a nice young man by pe1chl · · Score: 2, Informative

    He did not do that himself. The administrator of the FTP server he used has chosen that name.

  13. Re:Map of usenet by duffster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try the copy on UK Google Groups, which looks much better. Hopefully Google won't alter the link automatically (they now change google.com to google.co.uk in the UK).

    So, about that $5.00... ;-)

  14. Re:Er... by m50d · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, but they could avoid putting a reply button by any post older than, say, a year. "Normal" news servers don't carry old messages, so you can't reply to them except manually, which is a good thing. Google should be the same.

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  15. Re:Such a nice young man by Gumshoe · · Score: 2, Informative
    From page 84 of "Just For Fun", by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond.
    With the shell working, I started testing it's builtin progams. Then I compiled enough new programs to actually do something. I was compiling everything in Minix, but I moved the shell over to a special partition for the new operating system. Privately I called it Linux.

    Honest: I didn't want to ever release it under the name Linux because it was too egotistical. What was the name I reserved for any eventual release? Freax.
    And then from page 88 of the same book.
    [...] Ari Lemke, who insured that it made its way to the ftp site, hated the name Freax. He preferred the other working name I was using -- Linux -- and named my posting: pub/OS/Linux.
    So while it may be true to say that Linus didn't want to release the kernel under the name Linux. Through his own admission in his own book, Linus came up with the name Linux himself.
  16. Uh... Yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The timeline went up at the same time the Archive did. There was a link to it the initial press release, if I recall. So yes, it IS three years old.

  17. Re:Er... by 1u3hr · · Score: 2, Informative
    If you're not making this up... Care to elaborate

    As I said, it wasn't called "Usenet" then. Just a command line "news" running on a BSD system, as I dimly recall. About 5 articles a day. As a lowly 2nd year student at Melbourne Uni, an early adopter of Unix. I didn't have much access time or privileges.

    I note that both your and my posts have been modded "flamebait". How perverse.