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Google's 20-Year Usenet Timeline

Posted by timothy on from the immemorial dept.

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."

8 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. y2k prediction by tutwabee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I like the Y2K prediciton one. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/net.bugs/brows e_frm/thread/64696a1b035aab72 I didn't realize it was predicted so long ago.

  2. The new google groups by leoval · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The first impression after following the links is how weird the new google groups look. The whole censorship of the original emails is enough to destroy any sense of "history" in the posts.

    I would rather prefer a "perfect" archive, where anyone looking could get a copy of the intact document that was posted at that time.

    I wonder if a balance can be achieved between email harvesting and protecting the original documents.

  3. This is Bill Gates first post by br00tus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bill Gates posted to net.micro on July 22, 1983 from microsoft.uucp (from the account of Gordon Letwin, although he signs it as himself) talking about his crazy days at Harvard where he learned to do PEEKs and POKEs (cool, If I was using my Commodore-64 right now I'd do a POKE 53281,6 in honor of Bill)

  4. Re:My prediction for the near future. by Chatmag · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm basing that on several factors. Checking the Alexa rankings over the past few months, Google Groups have gone from about 7% of all Google users down to 1% as of a few moments ago. Granted, Alexa is not the most accurate measurement of a site, but it does give some indications as to overall popularity.

    Some of their own statistics show that most groups have low activity: Group-Society Activity High (167) Low (6712) Medium (137)

    All of the other groups show low activity as the largest numbers. They simply do not have the eyeballs hitting the groups.

    They do not show Adsense ads in groups, at least none that I've found. It's all paid for by ad revenue from other Google areas.

    The groups that are not moderated have degenerated into ad spam fests, driving off people interested in those groups topics.

    I think that when Alexa shows less than 1% of users, Google will decide it's no longer worth keeping.

    I do agree with you that Usenet can be useful for finding answers, I use a combination of Google search and Groups search. I still think Google will rethink Groups, either dumping it, or correcting the problems. (I'm leaning toward them dumping it).

    --
    Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
  5. First Mention of Slashdot.org by tinrobot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nov 4, 1997

    This will link to it: http://tinyurl.com/6sz2j

    Why is it in a strange language?

    First English mention is Nov 14, 1997.

    http://tinyurl.com/5snrm

  6. Douglas Adams' post, forever the optimist. by cgenman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll try and post news here from time to time if it
    seems like it might interest people - for instance, it looks as if the HHGG
    movie is finally coming after the shelf after 10 years.

    This post was made in 1993.

    --
    The ______ Agenda
  7. Re:Such a nice young man by The+Cydonian · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It's no accident that Linux was such an pleasant project to hack on way back when, Linus is just such a humble and polite person.
    Tell me, were you being ironic? :-) I mean, for fuck's sake, Linus was involved in the only flamefest we were "taught" about in a CS course!
    These days you're lucky to get a reply to an email when offering to contribute code to an open source project, let alone someone actually thanking you for going to the effort of making something for others to enjoy.
    Hate adding to a Good Ol' Times meme, but those USENET oldies sure had a lot of time back then; I mean, look at this fascinating posting from 1993. The guy not only demolishes the OP's points, but also deconstructs his writing style as well! You really don't get that sort of stuff these days in discussion fora, USENET or not, so it's probably more to do with netiquette back then, and less to do with Linus himself. (Which of course, is not to say he's not a great guy).
    --
    More than mere navel gazing.
  8. Re:Coming Soon! by g00z · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dude you must be new here:

    Some (humble) recommendations:

    * First "Pancake Ninja" troll
    * First "Ogg the open source caveman" post
    * First "Jon Kats Sucks" post
    * First appearance of the Bill Gates Borg icon

    --
    "The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"