The Usenet archives are one of the most precious resources on the Internet, and I'm glad to see them being handled by a company who (thus far) has their act together. Dejanews has been slipping the past few years, especially since it shifted its focus from netnews to precision buying. That was one combination I never did understand. Deja blew it big time, just like AltaVista did-- it was theirs to lose and they couldn't run with the ball.
I'm a little disappointed that Google didn't keep Deja alive until they were ready to roll out their own version, which I hope looks quite a bit different from the web search page they now use. But I do have faith in Google for doing this right-- they beat out AV at their own game, and a news archive will be a great addition to their search engine. I'm looking forward to see what they make of it.
So, is anyone as lost as I am without having the newsgroups for reference? Any thoughts on what the future holds for Usenet?
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