Imagine a world where Google sucks
thinbluemime
Imagine a world where Google sucks
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet_fix/
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/11/09/2029206.shtml
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.
Searching within a newsgroup, even one with thousands of posts, produces
no results at all. Confining a search to a range of dates also fails
silently, bulldozing the most obvious path to exploring an archive.
Templeton, who helped Google compile an index of historically significant
Usenet articles when it first launched its archive, thinks Google’s
neglect is a simple matter of economics.
“I presume they find that the volume of searches is too low for them to
put people on it, or the ad revenue results are too poor,” Templeton says.
“The ads don’t seem to match the pages well.”
In the end, then, the rusting shell of Google Groups is a reminder that
Google is an advertising company — not a modern-day Library of Alexandria.