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Google Groups has been left to die

ahelwer.ca

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Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#51

Post by qwertox »

I never understood how Discord can be seen as a replacement for mailing lists. To me it is the absolute chaos from a usability viewpoint and possibly a good place to chat about things which are not to be seen as persistent.

To me the main alternative would be a Discourse-based platform, which can be seen as an evolution to the traditional PHP-based bulletin boards.

I really hope that Google Groups doesn't shut down, but at this point I'm close to believing that Google care to disappoint. Then again, aren't a lot of Android development discussions taking place on Google Groups?

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#52

Post by Pxtl »

haolez wrote: post #17
jdfellow wrote: post #8

Google Groups performed the classic embrace-extend-extinguish maneuver against USENET, by way of their acquisition of DejaNews and then implementing their own forum/mailing list interface on top if it. But, I wonder how many communities that are using Google Groups would be suitably served by falling back to USENET. I suppose it would require some updates to both NNTP server software to be easier to administer (if yo…

The problem with USENET is spam. Moderation can be a burden. I suppose Google has some systems in place to mitigate this.

Chat AI is going to make combatting spam 100X harder. Imho we're reaching the end of our ability to allow anonymous contribution to public fora in general.

Which is why I have a conspiracy theory about why conspiracy theorists are against "digital ID".

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#53

Post by Alex3917 »

FWIW I recently wrote a Discourse plug-in proposal to help communities migrate their existing content from Google Groups to Discourse, while giving members who prefer email the ability to fully participate from their inbox without any major changes from the current Google Groups experience. I didn't get a ton of interest so I haven't moved forward in productizing this, but all of the email parsing code is already written (and in production), so I can still ship a plug-in if this is something that other folks actually care about:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/proposed-plugin-to-improve-repl...

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#54

Post by eterm »

nerdo wrote: post #28
jdfellow wrote: post #8

Google Groups performed the classic embrace-extend-extinguish maneuver against USENET, by way of their acquisition of DejaNews and then implementing their own forum/mailing list interface on top if it. But, I wonder how many communities that are using Google Groups would be suitably served by falling back to USENET. I suppose it would require some updates to both NNTP server software to be easier to administer (if yo…

Just like when Google performed the classic embrace-extend-extinguish maneuver against GOPHER.

Huh? Gopher was dead before google existed.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#55

Post by magicalist »

jdfellow wrote: post #8

Google Groups performed the classic embrace-extend-extinguish maneuver against USENET, by way of their acquisition of DejaNews and then implementing their own forum/mailing list interface on top if it. But, I wonder how many communities that are using Google Groups would be suitably served by falling back to USENET. I suppose it would require some updates to both NNTP server software to be easier to administer (if yo…

This always comes up in these threads and I always wonder if the commenters ever actually used Usenet.

DejaNews isn't and never was Usenet, it was an archive, and Google Groups was just another Usenet client. Google Groups embrace-extend-extinguished Usenet as much as Gmail embrace-extend-extinguished email, and it got some cachet from having historical posts.

You can still use Usenet as much as you could 20 years ago, and while it was nice a decade or two ago to be able to browse historical threads in google groups, now the Internet Archive has an excellent Usenet archive[1] so we don't have to trust a giant corporation with ADD to hold onto history for us.

[1] https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#56

Post by checkcircuits »

jmclnx wrote: post #7

As someone who uses a "real" usenet site and reader, cannot wait until google groups is gone. One of the many issues is "comp.lang.c++" items from google is being sent to "comp.lang.c" because a change google made cannot handle the "++". The sad thing is we may loose the history that came from dejanews, I was one of the many people who were very upset when dejanews was bought by google. No surprise it morphed into th…

Finally someone with experience with usenet speaks up. I was pretty sad when Google acquired dejanews.

I don't understand the author's concern but perhaps as a person who doesnt use Google Groups I don't understand the utility. If newsgroups were being used before whats stopping them from being used now? You can get a block account for $5 dollars with unlimited text access. The only thing different from long ago is that most ISPs don't provide free text newsgroup accounts anymore. As for the author mailing lists have always worked...

Seems much ado about nothing.

EDIT: Ah I now realize Google Groups was build ON TOP of usenet. I see part of the problem. Injecting that history back into the annals of the news servers is going to be a challenge.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#57

Post by gtirloni »

scottfr wrote: post #44

Google Groups is heavily used within Google's ecosystem. Specifically it is: - a system for managing group-based access for Google Workspace users, e.g. share a Google Doc with a group to give all members access - a system for managing group-based access to Google Cloud Platform resources, e.g. share a BigQuery table with a Google Group to give all group members access to it. - a simple way for Google Workspace users…

Yes, Google Groups is used for much more than emails. That's not the point of the article though.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#58

Post by lacker »

I love open source but I think this analysis misses the real problem. In 2023, communities built purely on "mailing list" style tools are much less engaging and useful than communities that allow live discussions.

For example, the author refers to the SMT-LIB google group. There has only been one message posted there in the last month! That isn't a "google groups" problem, it's a "nobody wants to use a mailing list any more" problem.

I don't think using open source tools would have solved this issue. Mailman is open source and for a long time was the obvious open source alternative to Google Groups but hardly anyone is recommending that you migrate from Google Groups to Mailman!

That said, there's nothing wrong with looking for an open source solution. It makes sense to try open source tools when you're talking about a community built around open source software. Zulip seems worth a try.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#59

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

troyastorino wrote: post #35
modeless wrote: post #19

Google groups will never die because Google uses it to manage internal mailing lists.

Google groups is also the mechanism for defining groups for viewing/editing permissions, comments, calendar invites, etc across Google Workspace and for access permissions in GCP. That group definition aligns nicely with being a mailing list grouping. Those use cases are not going to go away, and I would expect Google will invest in them more (as Workspace has been an area that Google has significantly invested in, a…

I think this is a key point that many people don't realize. The ACL groups and mailing lists you create in Google Workspace are the same groups you see when you go to groups.google.com. This is absolutely integral to Google Workspace as you point out and isn't going anywhere.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#60

Post by dalbasal »

Looking back, it's quite surprising how stagnant, in some sense, the social media space has become. How centralised and how... lame.

The big hitters really did pillage and burn. Now, between moderation norms becoming increasingly sensitive and the hard turn the web took away from open... It's hard to see any new form take off.

That said, perhaps that means it's a perfect time.

Groups/Usenet has its limitations. Features invented over the last 30 years have value. Usenet can't be our YouTube or Facebook. But.. I refuse to believe open protocols got so much of the job done for so long, but the last mile requires a unicorn to platformize it.

There aren't that many hurdles to taking social media back. Login/identity. HN demonstrates that this can be relatively simple. Hosting. Not quite as simple, apparently. Moderation. Thats a stickier problem, but volunteer/community tends to be better... imo, than organisational moderation anyway.

There must be a way. Why not have freedom in social media again?

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