Google archives 500 million Usenet messagesgreenspun.com : LUSENET : Unk's Wild Wild West : One Thread |
The porn is back. The chronicles of many nasty flamewars are back, too. And everything you ever said in Usenet, back before you had a real job or kids to worry about, has now returned to haunt you.Look up your old posts
-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), June 30, 2001
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,43392,00.htmlPopular Internet search site Google has made more than 500-million archived Usenet messages -- an archive dating back to 1995 -- available online again.
Google acquired Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, which included the archives, on Feb. 12 and promptly took a large part of the archive offline until the company could design a speedier search interface for the collection.
Google seems to have succeeded in optimizing the search engine for the archive. And some users are discovering that Google's more efficient search engine is turning up old, sometimes embarrassing, Usenet posts.
Back in 1995, people might not have been thinking that their posts would be archived and searchable some day. And they were also less concerned about privacy.
Virtually everyone who posted on Usenet back then used their real names and e-mail addresses. Now, many people post with nicknames and altered e-mail addresses.
"Google certainly did optimize the search function, and I have found all the posts I made when I was 18. I cannot believe what an absolute, utter asshole I was back then," said a rueful Mike Milgen, an open-source programmer who was furious when the Deja archives first went offline.
Many users are now reporting the reappearance of posts that a search on the original Deja service did not retrieve.
"Oh lord, you can find everything now. I don't know if I like this," said freelance technology writer Terry Franks, who immediately searched for his own old posts. . . .
Despite -- or perhaps because of -- all the assorted strangeness, most feel that Google's Usenet archive is an irreplaceable and invaluable reference.
The Usenet archives are probably the best technical library on the Internet, and also a wonderfully bizarre collection of all the things that humans discuss, said Michael McCormick, a professor of New Media at the University of Toronto.
"In amongst the random flames, self-obsessed rantings, and insanely filthy porn, there is so much that is of real value," McCormick said. "I applaud Google for making Usenet archives available again."
"We sometimes forget that the Web is only a small part of the Internet. Usenet is stupidity, brilliance, anger, kindness, art and sex - all jumbled up in one glorious mess. It's the human side of the Internet."
-- Look up (your@old.posts), June 30, 2001.
It's great to have access once again to all the posts by idiot doomers like Paul Milne. Now we can link directly to posts where he made references to drinking dog piss from rusty hubcaps and shoveling lime on the hastily-dug shallow graves of the corpses of our children. Thanks Google!!!
-- (google@is.great), June 30, 2001.