It's official, google groups is dead (brain dead at least)!

Please advise when you have made the move and I'll remove your name from my whitelist.

...Jim Thompson

My hunch is that some day in the not too distant future someone at Google is going to get fired. It's mind-boggling how carelessly they have destroyed a good idea and how far the spirit of that company is from the time when the founders did not have a huge executive airplane.

Hardly. Google has been systematically destroying usenet ever since they bought out deja and started destroying the interface there, piece by piece. They make bounds more money from sponsored ads on webpages/webforums than anything they could wring out from usenet, which actually competes with their (and many other ad companies) sources of revenue.

Remember, Google is just another company looking at the bottom line here, no different than any other multi-national, despite their meager beginnings.

Jon

A wee problem in their concept is that part of the ad revenue comes AFAIK from viewers that use gmail and are thus a captive audience. When the reputation of the gmail domain begins to slide downhill, as it now has, the viewership quality and quantity will begin to slide as well. Then revenue from that biz secttion will follow the slide. It's just like a certain part of town that used to be great and now nobody would dare go there at night.

Yep, time for something fresh to enter the game.

Just ask your ISP if your hookup includes a news server. If not, then start whining and making noise, because it's supposed to be "industry standard". And a web page of your own as well. :-)

Good Luck! Rich