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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

#221

Post by bbarn »

nightpool wrote: post #33

Google Groups has survived 22 years. How many self-hosted Discourse forums can say the same? If you're working on a new, small side-project like a new formal evaluator, are you going to want to spend your limited administrative bandwidth onboarding new contributors, responding to feature suggestions, talking to users, etc, or are you going to want to spend it trying to wrangle self-hosted forum administration and fig…

Not only that, but people continue to evolve the way they have (no pun intended) discourse. Email used to be the thing professionals and even friends out of reach did to message each other. I now use email effectively only for delivery confirmations and log in verifications. I haven't had a personal email in over a year I'd guess. People text, they whatsapp, they messenger, they telegram, but no one emails. The same with groups. A forum I have been on for decades has recently started a poll with the admins and power users of "Should we just close the forum since all the good stuff is on discord anyway".

Look at Slack's organic growth - it was great, people just started it and basically forced adoption on companies. Not so much today, because things evolved again. Discord is doing the same - people just start one, doesn't have to be official, then ultimately, it becomes official.

But you know, if your FOSS community can only survive with one specific tool, is it really a community?

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#223

Post by vasco »

nightpool wrote: post #33

Google Groups has survived 22 years. How many self-hosted Discourse forums can say the same? If you're working on a new, small side-project like a new formal evaluator, are you going to want to spend your limited administrative bandwidth onboarding new contributors, responding to feature suggestions, talking to users, etc, or are you going to want to spend it trying to wrangle self-hosted forum administration and fig…

I wish Discourse never happened to the internet. What a regression from phpbb in so many respects when that's the thing they set out to improve.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#224

Post by smcl »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #214
ttkciar wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you just blanking out on the whole of the 1965-1980? If you have to dig back half a century to make your point about contemporary events, you have effectively ceded the point.

It was one of the politically violent periods that people are still alive, and it happened recently enough still working, from. I really don't think using the most extreme period in very recent history is ceding any point....

Well it is if we're talking about online abuse and the role of social media in enabling real life violence. Last I checked there weren't too many social media users back in 1965-1980.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#225

Post by scrollaway »

astrostl wrote: post #149
nayroclade wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I also lament what Google Groups has become, let's not rewrite history. By 2001, Dejanews had rebranded as a shopping comparison site, ran out of money, and was on the verge of shutting down. I don't remember many people being upset about Google stepping in to save the archive. And, in the early days, the signs were positive. Google actually cared about it at that point, and still had a good reputation. They ex…

> I don't remember many people being upset about Google stepping in I don't remember any former/active usenet user not being upset! Specifically because Deja had a full archive and robust search, and it was expected that the service would be Googlified into oblivion. Which happened, and even faster than the biggest doomsayers predicted.

In 2001? "Googlified"??? Do you even realize this was Google's first acquisition?

Either you're making things up, or you are rewriting history as GP said.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#226

Post by urbandw311er »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #59
troyastorino wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this really is true then @AlbertCory’s comment earlier in this thread about there just being one guy working on Groups is absolutely terrifying.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#227

Post by smcl »

drstewart wrote: post #164
mschuster91 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There must be a way. Why not have freedom in social media again? Because any kind of social media, especially when it allows binary assets, will be abused by CSAM and piracy spreaders, by Holocaust deniers, by scammers, by spammers shilling dick enlargement pills, questionably "legal" drugs, questionable dietary supplements or all kinds of other stuff, by trolls bullying people right up to suicide "for the lulz", o…

>You call it "alt-left", I proudly call it "Antifa". Yeah, I wonder why you're only concerned about right wing trolling - left wing abuse is a-okay with you?

You pulled that out of mschuster91's profile as an own, but actually I think that means they're probably pretty chill. I probably wouldn't have known that about them otherwise, thanks for sharing it!

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#229

Post by pbreit »

nightpool wrote: post #33

Google Groups has survived 22 years. How many self-hosted Discourse forums can say the same? If you're working on a new, small side-project like a new formal evaluator, are you going to want to spend your limited administrative bandwidth onboarding new contributors, responding to feature suggestions, talking to users, etc, or are you going to want to spend it trying to wrangle self-hosted forum administration and fig…

The "new" web UI is positively awful. The messages list is unreadable.

Re: Google Groups has been left to die

#230

Post by benhurmarcel »

cmh89 wrote: post #26
modeless wrote: post #19

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

Couldn't they just bring it internal? It must cost a good deal of money to keep it going, even if its not actively worked on.

It's used heavily by many other companies that pay for Google Workspace too.
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