Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles

[snopes]

In February 2001, Google rescued Usenet's history when it acquired the New York-based Deja.com, and with it a Usenet archive going back to 1995. It turned the archive into Google Groups, in a move that was cheered by net geeks who had seen Deja’s reliability declining, and were certain that the supremely competent Google would save it.

Flash forward nearly eight years, and visiting Google Groups is like touring ancient ruins.

On the surface, it looks as clean and shiny as every other Google service, which makes its rotting interior all the more jarring — like visiting Disneyland and finding broken windows and graffiti on Main Street USA.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

[Steve Eisenberg]

Yes, it stinks.

When I go to the Google Groups Advanced Search and try to find my own early technical posts, I get seventeen hits with the terms:

"steve eisenberg" IIGS

But when I change from the default "Sort by Relevance" to "Sort by Date," making no other change, I get zero hits.

Loss of my own rantings won't harm mankind. But as a computer programmer, when I must modify software written in an old language, the increasing difficulty in getting anything accomplished with this resource sometimes slows my progress.

[Mad Jay]

Adopt-Advance-Abandon. That's the strategy that works best to kill competing technology. You adopt the technology, then you advance it in a direction that doesn't really help it but keeps other competitors from catching upto you, then you abandon it. It's the technology equivalent of taking a dog from a shelter and leaving it in the woods.

So sorry to see Google mimic the mighty Microsoft. Look what they did with Hotmail, for example.