Google Groups

Google Groups
Google groups logo.png
Google Groups screenshot

Google Groups screenshot
Developer(s) Google
Written in Python
Operating system Cross-platform (web-based application)
Type Newsgroups
electronic mailing lists
Website groups.google.com

Google Groups is a service from Google that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests. Membership in Google Groups is free of charge and many groups are anonymous. Users can find discussion groups related to their interests and participate in threaded conversations, either through a web interface or by e-mail. They can also start new groups.[1] Google Groups also includes an archive of Usenet newsgroup postings dating back to 1981[2] and supports reading and posting to Usenet groups.[3] Users can also set up mailing list archives for e-mail lists that are hosted elsewhere.[4]

Contents

History

In February 2001, Google acquired Deja News, which provided a search engine to access an archive of Usenet newsgroup articles.[5] Users were then able to access these Usenet newsgroups through the new Google Groups interface. By the end of 2001 the archive had been supplemented with other archived messages dating back to 11 May 1981.[6][7][8] These early posts from 1981-1991 were donated to Google by the University of Western Ontario, based on archives by Henry Spencer from the University of Toronto.[9] Shortly after, Google released a new version, which allowed users to create their own (non-Usenet) groups.

In February 2006, Google modified the interface of Google Groups, adding profiles and post ratings.

Sometime around 2008 or 2009 Google also began removing and censoring entire Usenet groups in the alt.* category.

Kinds of groups hosted by Google

Google provides two distinct kinds of groups: traditional Usenet groups, and non-Usenet groups that are more similar to mailing lists. The latter type is accessible only by web or by e-mail, not by NNTP. The Google Groups user interface and help messages do not use a distinct name for mailing-list style groups, referring to both styles of group as "Google Groups."[10]

Google recognizes the X-No-Archive header and displays messages containing it for only seven days, after which the article becomes no longer available to the public. Google also recognizes the "-- " Usenet signature delimiter, and removes the significant space at the end (thus, proper Usenet signatures can't be added to articles posted via Google Groups).

Notable interface features

Groups search
Google Search incorporates public groups into its results. Searches return the posts which most match the search query, and if any groups match, they will be displayed at the top of the results with a link to the Google Groups directory.
Profiles
Users may create public profiles which are linked from all of their posts.
Rating posts
A user can rate a post with 1 to 5 out of 5 stars. A post's rating is based on the average of all the user ratings it gets, and a thread's rating is based on the average rating of all the posts in the thread. Users may not rate their own posts.
Starring threads
Users may mark up to 200 threads as "starred" to track them centrally.
E-mail masking
To prevent scammers or spammers from harvesting e-mail addresses from a group, Google masks all e-mail addresses on its web interface by replacing up to the last 3 characters of the username with no less than three dots. To view the full e-mail address, a user must respond to a CAPTCHA challenge. E-mail addresses are only masked when viewing a Google Group or Usenet newsgroup through the web interface, never when subscribers receive messages by e-mail, nor when the Usenet articles are distributed to other servers. Google Groups does not allow users to obfuscate their own e-mail addresses.
Group web pages
In the beta version of October 5, 2006, Google introduced group pages which can be edited by group members or group managers. Pages can link to each other and Google keeps versions of pages in a similar way to a Wiki. Group members can also discuss pages. This feature was promoted from beta status on January 24, 2007. The group pages can also store files for download, but on June 7, 2010 Google announced that downloading ZIP files from the group pages was temporarily disabled,[11] allegedly because of some issues with malware.[12]

Official Google Groups

Google has created several official help groups for some of its services, such as Gmail. In these groups, users can ask and answer questions about the relevant Google service. Each official group has a Google representative who occasionally responds to queries. Google representatives always have a blue G symbol in their nicknames.

Some official groups include:

Google also uses Google Groups to host their Google Friends and Google Page Creator Updates mailing lists, which are announcement-only groups where only moderators can post.

There are also help forums, which appear to have different functionality from Google Groups:

Criticism

The late Lee Rizor, also known as "Blinky the Shark," started the Usenet Improvement Project, a project which is highly critical of Google Groups and its users. The project aims to "make Usenet participation a better experience." They have accused Google Groups of turning a blind eye to an "increasing wave of spam" from its servers and of encouraging an Eternal September of "lusers" and "lamers" arriving in established groups en masse. The Usenet Improvement Project provides several killfile examples to block messages posted by Google Groups users in several newsreaders.[14]

On 16 October 2003, John Wiley & Sons sent a letter to Google after discovering that copyrighted text from a book they published was made available for download on a Google group.[15]

Slashdot and Wired contributors have criticized Google for its inattention to a search engine for Google Groups, leaving many older postings virtually inaccessible.[16][17][18]

Outages

For about one week starting August 19, 2009, Google Groups did not send new articles to moderation for moderated Usenet groups such as comp.lang.c++.moderated, causing a severe reduction of traffic in those groups. A second such outage occurred from September 16–23, 2009. A Google representative acknowledged the problem on September 22, 2009 in a posting to the Google help forums.[19]

Since November 24, 2009, outages still persist on Google Groups. Pages are being lost the moment they are published and e-mail notifications are yielding broken links. Even though the "Is Something Broken" support forum is full of complaints, Google has not acknowledged or acted to fix the problem.

Blocking

Google Groups has been blocked in Turkey since April 10, 2008 by the order of a court in Turkey.[20] According to The Guardian, the court banned Google Groups following a libel complaint by Adnan Oktar against the service. Google Groups was the first of several websites to be blocked by the Turkish Government in rapid succession solely for including material which allegedly offended Islam.[21]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "How do I create my own group?". Google Groups Help Center. http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46368. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  2. ↑ "How far back does Google's Usenet archive go?". Google Groups Help Center. http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46439. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  3. ↑ "What is a Usenet Newsgroup?". Google Groups Help Center. http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46854. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  4. ↑ "Can I use Google Groups to archive another mailing list?". Google Groups Help Center. http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46387. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  5. ↑ "Google Acquires Usenet Discussion Service and Significant Assets from Deja.com". Google. 12 February 2001. http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/pressrelease48.html. 
  6. ↑ "20 Year Archive on Google Groups". Google. 11 December 2001. http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html. 
  7. ↑ "Full Usenet archive now available". Pandia. 29 April 2001. http://www.pandia.com/searchworld/2001-26-usenet.html. 
  8. ↑ "Digital history saved". BBC. 14 December 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1709527.stm. 
  9. ↑ Katharine Mieszkowski (7 January 2002). "The Geeks Who Saved Usenet". Salon.com. http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/07/saving_usenet/index.html. 
  10. ↑ "What's the difference between a Usenet newsgroup and a Google Group?". Google Groups Help Center. http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46461&topic=9244. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  11. ↑ "Zip files temporarily disabled". 2010-06-07. http://groups.google.ca/group/is-something-broken/browse_thread/thread/ee0bc4d6e3cd92da#. Retrieved 2010-08-21. 
  12. ↑ "Cybercriminals exploit Google Groups". 2010-05-13. http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/9435/cybercriminals-exploit-google-groups/. Retrieved 2010-08-21. 
  13. ↑ The Google Groups Team (2 August 2010). "Discussions > Groups Announcements and Alerts > Important Message About This Forum". Google Groups Help Forum. http://groups.google.com/group/groupsknownissues/browse_thread/thread/beaa1543ecc87df3. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  14. ↑ "Improve-Usenet". 2008-10-13. http://improve-usenet.org. 
  15. ↑ "Publisher Complains of Computer Security Text on Google Groups". Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=929. Retrieved 2006-11-15. 
  16. ↑ "How to Search Today's Usenet For Programming Information". Slashdot. November 9, 2008. http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/11/09/2029206.shtml. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  17. ↑ "Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles". Wired. October 7, 2009. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  18. ↑ "Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive". Wired. October 8, 2009. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet_fix/. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  19. ↑ "Discussions > Is Something Broken > Wake-up call: LARGE SCALE FAILURE since 16th September". Google Groups Help Forum. 22 September 2009. http://groups.google.com/group/is-something-broken/browse_frm/thread/b35321b0d6761829/64967df8d988ccd8?hl=en&tvc=1#64967df8d988ccd8. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  20. ↑ "Turkey bans Google Groups". Today's Zaman. 12 April 2008. http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=138847. Retrieved 2010-08-10. 
  21. ↑ Butt, Riazat (2008-09-18). "Turkish court bans Richard Dawkins website". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/18/turkey. Retrieved 2010-05-03. 

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