this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Lemmy
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Why did so much of usenet end up on Google Groups?
It was a big deal when we got an archive we could search of all content...
"The Deja News Research Service was an archive of messages posted to Usenet discussion groups, started in March 1995 by Steve Madere in Austin, Texas. Its powerful search engine capabilities won the service acclaim, generated controversy, and significantly changed the perceived nature of online discussion. This archive was acquired by Google in 2001."
Why did change the perceived nature? That discussion became less ethereal?
Storage was still pretty expensive, and there we transitions in computing from originally paper terminals to screen and people didn't have a sense of long-term retention of personal messages (I guess many people probably felt that way about SMS messages on mobile). There also wasn't really a way to look at a user's "profile" like you have on Lemmy - to see everything you post in any topic - which a search-engine provided a way to search for your name across a time period.
Google Groups is one interface to it.. and likely the largest archive of unset (via Deja News).
You can find Usnet in other places such as https://www.eternal-september.org and getting a news reader.