Duke To Shut Down Usenet Server

DukeTech writes "This week marks the end of an era for one of the earliest pieces of Internet history, which got its start at Duke University more than 30 years ago. On May 20, Duke will shut down its Usenet server, which provides access to a worldwide electronic discussion network of newsgroups started in 1979 by two Duke graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis." Rantastic and other readers wrote about the shutdown of the British Usenet indexer Newzbin today; the site sank under the weight of a lawsuit and outstanding debt. Combine these stories with the recent news of Microsoft shuttering its newsgroups, along with other recent stories, and the picture does not look bright for Usenet.

Comments

Re:...and there's still no comparable alternative.

[GreatBunzinni]

No, that isn't a stretch. Google bought out dejanews to kill it off. Nowadays google groups doesn't work at all, with them not even bothering with spam (i.e., they don't do anything about the countless complaints regarding Google spammers and spam in google groups) along with them burying any search result that involves Usenet from their groups search. This has become so bad that Google's top search hits on programming topics frequently consists of sites that shamelessly mirror Usenet content to try to pass it off as their own forums, while it completely ignores any hit from the very same newsgroup.

Then there's Google's inability to find even popular newsgroups such as comp.lang.c++ when you even when you explicitly search for the group

If that wasn't enough, Google's newsgroup archive has since been eroding, which is a major blow to one of Usenet's most valuable use, humanity's best and most successfull attempt at an expert system.

So it isn't a stretch to claim that Google is the one responsible for killing newsgroups. The company eliminated the established service for newsgroup search, it has gradually destroyed the service and has been actively hiding Usenet from the public.

Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing

[Maestro4k]

Those were good times. Thanks guys.

I don't think Usenet's in much trouble, it's just that the huge level of traffic, and usage relative minority among all Internet denizens is making it into a more specialized area that you have to pay to access. Take for example Giganews, they've been around for quite some time, and they keep upping their retention. Right now they offer 650 days binary retention, 2,522 days text retention, 109,000+ newsgroups and have servers in North America, Europe and Asia. They also just recently added a VPN service free for the top tier accounts, which also get unlimited downloads and SSL encrypted Usenet traffic. All that for $30 a month, the VPN alone is probably worth that, much less all the other stuff. To pull all that off they have to have invested tremendous amounts of money into storage alone, so they're apparently not hurting for money any.

And Giganews isn't alone in offering paid access to Usenet, there's tons of other companies doing it, and it seems that new ones pop up every day. So I think saying Usenet's dying is premature. It may die eventually, but it's not happening now.

Re:...and there's still no comparable alternative.

[GreatBunzinni]

You sadly don't know what you are talking about and you don't even try to disprove anything that I've said. For example, you replied to my comment regarding how Google is a disgrace at filtering spam with an idiotic statement that:

I don't see any difference between DejaNews and Googlegroups. It's still the same interface that I've been using since the 90s.

Either you failed to read what I've written or you tried to pull a red herring to divert the attention from Google's appallingly bad track record at tackling both spam and spammers to this absurd comment regarding user interfaces. My point was about Google's terrible anti-spam and anti-spammer track record, not UI design. So, where exactly did you get the idea this was about UI?

Then your next statement is this silly thing:

Google search results DO link to Usenet groups.

Once again you've failed to understand what has been said. No one said that Google stopped presenting usenet results. What has been said was that Google groups search is so bad that it even places on their top hits (i.e., what Google considers the best match) hits from websites that do nothing more than mirror usenet to try to pass off discussions from newsgroups as their own forums. As a quick and dirty demonstration, I've browsed comp.lang.c and then searched Google groups for "How to use maloc with strcut", a discussion which has been started quite recently and whose subject is somewhat unique. So, after searching for the subject through Google groups, you will notice that the first two hits are from websites mirroring comp.lang.c. Granted, in this test (which was quick and dirty) a link to Google's site on comp.lang.c appears in 3rd place but this, unfortunately, isn't the norm. It is, quite unfortunately, an isolated incident. For example, if you search for "malloc array" on google groups then all your hits will be from sites that either mirror usenet or provide rudimentary forums, with the first usenet hits appearing on the 3rd page and being from groups such as mailing.freebsd.stable and comp.unix.questions, the last one being a hit from 1991. In fact, the first hit that pops up from Google's usenet archive that comes from a C-related newsgroup comes in the form of this post from comp.lang.c.moderated that appears at the bottom of the 5th search results page and is from 2003.

So, care to explain where exactly do you not see a burying of usenet's search results and an erosion of the usenet's archive?

You may play the role of one of Google's tireless PR drones by either slapping red herrings around in the attempt to conceal Google's problems such as the abysmal spam problem and it's usenet results' burying in it's Google groups search. You may even try to go into personal attacks such as claiming that Google's problems amount to nothing more than user dumbness. Yet, that doesn't stop people from looking stuff for themselves and, as a consequence, realize that your accusations are either baseless or patently false.