5 ms·

I'm currently in a very active Google Group that is about 4 or 5 years old. It does what it's supposed to do; it's an email listserv. But I never see or use the

by wyclif 11y ago

I'm currently in a very active Google Group that is about 4 or 5 years old. It does what it's supposed to do; it's an email listserv. But I never see or use the GG interface; I only use it over email. What is "shitty" about it? Genuinely curious.

srean 11y ago
Oh the GG interface absolutely. Its one if the slowest, most bloated site out there. Have you tried searching ? Search was precisely why I had been so welcoming of them buying all Usenet data. GG habitually gobbles up Github notifications too. I think the current experience is much worse than yahoo groups an déjà of yore and they did more than being just a listserv and did it better.
znfi 11y ago
I think the main complaint is that it seems like Google, instead of developing a great product that people actually want to use, are trying to lock people in to what they already have. I've never really used Google Groups, but then this might be a good thing in this case. Just trying it quickly, there doesn't seem to be any way to subscribe to a group without getting a Google account, I guess after doing so you might be able to just forward it all to whatever email you want. But to an outsider it certainly doesn't look like "an email listserv", and it's not entirely clear how to use it as such. Whether this makes Google Groups "shitty", I'm not sure. I guess a large part of it is about expectations. Does Google still claim to "do no evil"? I'm sure if it was Microsoft that was running the service then no one would be surprised. (Regarding the actual interface, atleast I find for example gmane to have a much better interface, Google Groups seems very bloated with lots of dead space. One additional thing, as a none native English speaker, Google Groups shows for each message, a rather large box with a question asking if I'd like a translation of that post. I have a hard time believing this feature is used enough to warrant the amount of space that's spent on it.)
- jostylr 11y ago
  The manager of a group can add emails of people without google accounts. They then only get emails (no web interface meaning no searching) and they cannot change the settings from digest to individual though the manager can. A wee bit unfriendly, to be sure, but it gets it done.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > Whether this makes Google Groups "shitty", I'm not sure. I guess a large part of it is about expectations. Does Google still claim to "do no evil"? I'm sure if it was Microsoft that was running the service then no one would be surprised. Microsoft had a bunch of newsgroups running onicrosoft servers. Some of those newsgroups propagated outside MS. It was a nice experience. There was the Microsoft MVP (most valued professional) programme where people with in-depth knowledge of a product and reasonable people-skills would provide peer support. Including the term MVP in a web search would return the websites for those people. For years (and probably still) those pages were sources of xcellent information about MS products. Here's one example. Search terms [excel fill handle MVP] http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/excel/fillhand.htm http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/excel/fillhand.htm This page loads instantly. It tells me what the fill handle is, what it does, how to use it, how to trouble shoot it, how to get more information about it, how to use the existing MS Excel documentation to get this information. It covers some advanced fill handle use, and some gotchas. It alsotells you whih parts of this information are not found in the help files. In this case: MS did good[1] things for Usenet. Google fucked it. [1] ignoring the massive amounts of sub-optimality caused by OE having some Usenet functionality but being buggy and insecure.
- tired_man 11y ago
  > Whether this makes Google Groups "shitty", I'm not sure. I guess a large part of it is about expectations. Does Google still claim to "do no evil"? I'm sure if it was Microsoft that was running the service then no one would be surprised. Unfortunately, "Do No Evil" does not include, "Don't Be A Dick." Google has killed 15-20 years worth of information that's not only of interest for it's history, but for the still useful conversations on damned near any topic you can think of. Ok, so not everything is still useful. I can't argue that since there were plenty of sports and entertainment groups, but there were also many groups whose information doesn't really become stale. In hiding this data, Google has fucked over anyone who might have benefited from finding it. Hell, the very damned first time I ever heard of Google was an announcement on USENET. I thought they were pretty slick then and I started using Google instead of DogPile(? I think it was dogpile. That was a long time ago.).
- patja 11y ago
  You can create a Google account for any email address...no need to create a gmail account just to setup forwarding to somewhere else. Or will those accounts not work with Google Groups?
Hoff 11y ago
Google Groups has various options, one of which is a comparatively poor web-based front-end to Usenet. (Yes, there are still active Usenet groups.) Getting this right across multiple browsers isn't easy, but Google Groups postings to Usenet can be pretty badly formatted. Some history: Google acquired DejaNews and the contents of other usenet archives, and has largely let all of that data languish, with what can sometimes be very weak search abilities of the archives via Google Groups (no hits for XYZ in an active group for XYZ, for instance), and where Google doesn't make the Usenet archives available and visible via the main search Google engine, and has generally become somewhat of problem. Then there are the folks that dredge up a decades-old usenet thread — possibly having no idea what Usenet is — and post to it, and with the usual hilarity that ensues. "Hey, is PDQ still available?" to a post offering PDQ that originally posted in 1997, etc. By some appearances, Google Groups is headed in the same direction as Google Reader.
kahirsch 11y ago
My main complaint is the search interface. When they first put the Deja News archive online, the search function was very good. It even improved over the first few years. One great thing is that USENET posts were dated, so you could look for the first occurrence of a word, phrase, rumor, etc. That's hard to do on the web. Then, a few years ago, the search function started to get worse with every release, with reduced functionality and more and more unreliable results. You might search for a term and see a result from 2005. Then, when you limited results to before 2006, you would get nothing! Around the time they were trying to force Google-plus integration, it became nearly unusable. There used to be an advanced search page[1], but that's gone. When you search within a group, there's a pull-down for advanced search options, but that's missing from the main cross-group search. It seems that search operators[2] may still work. The same kind of degradation happened with Google News Archive and, to a lesser extent, Google Books. [1] https://groups.google.com/advanced_search https://groups.google.com/advanced_search [2] https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2371405 https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2371405

by wyclif 11y ago

srean 11y ago

Oh the GG interface absolutely. Its one if the slowest, most bloated site out there. Have you tried searching ? Search was precisely why I had been so welcoming of them buying all Usenet data. GG habitually gobbles up Github notifications too. I think the current experience is much worse than yahoo groups an déjà of yore and they did more than being just a listserv and did it better.

znfi 11y ago

I think the main complaint is that it seems like Google, instead of developing a great product that people actually want to use, are trying to lock people in to what they already have. I've never really used Google Groups, but then this might be a good thing in this case. Just trying it quickly, there doesn't seem to be any way to subscribe to a group without getting a Google account, I guess after doing so you might be able to just forward it all to whatever email you want. But to an outsider it certainly doesn't look like "an email listserv", and it's not entirely clear how to use it as such. Whether this makes Google Groups "shitty", I'm not sure. I guess a large part of it is about expectations. Does Google still claim to "do no evil"? I'm sure if it was Microsoft that was running the service then no one would be surprised. (Regarding the actual interface, atleast I find for example gmane to have a much better interface, Google Groups seems very bloated with lots of dead space. One additional thing, as a none native English speaker, Google Groups shows for each message, a rather large box with a question asking if I'd like a translation of that post. I have a hard time believing this feature is used enough to warrant the amount of space that's spent on it.)

jostylr 11y ago
The manager of a group can add emails of people without google accounts. They then only get emails (no web interface meaning no searching) and they cannot change the settings from digest to individual though the manager can. A wee bit unfriendly, to be sure, but it gets it done.
DanBC 11y ago
> Whether this makes Google Groups "shitty", I'm not sure. I guess a large part of it is about expectations. Does Google still claim to "do no evil"? I'm sure if it was Microsoft that was running the service then no one would be surprised. Microsoft had a bunch of newsgroups running onicrosoft servers. Some of those newsgroups propagated outside MS. It was a nice experience. There was the Microsoft MVP (most valued professional) programme where people with in-depth knowledge of a product and reasonable people-skills would provide peer support. Including the term MVP in a web search would return the websites for those people. For years (and probably still) those pages were sources of xcellent information about MS products. Here's one example. Search terms [excel fill handle MVP] http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/excel/fillhand.htm http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/excel/fillhand.htm This page loads instantly. It tells me what the fill handle is, what it does, how to use it, how to trouble shoot it, how to get more information about it, how to use the existing MS Excel documentation to get this information. It covers some advanced fill handle use, and some gotchas. It alsotells you whih parts of this information are not found in the help files. In this case: MS did good[1] things for Usenet. Google fucked it. [1] ignoring the massive amounts of sub-optimality caused by OE having some Usenet functionality but being buggy and insecure.
tired_man 11y ago
> Whether this makes Google Groups "shitty", I'm not sure. I guess a large part of it is about expectations. Does Google still claim to "do no evil"? I'm sure if it was Microsoft that was running the service then no one would be surprised. Unfortunately, "Do No Evil" does not include, "Don't Be A Dick." Google has killed 15-20 years worth of information that's not only of interest for it's history, but for the still useful conversations on damned near any topic you can think of. Ok, so not everything is still useful. I can't argue that since there were plenty of sports and entertainment groups, but there were also many groups whose information doesn't really become stale. In hiding this data, Google has fucked over anyone who might have benefited from finding it. Hell, the very damned first time I ever heard of Google was an announcement on USENET. I thought they were pretty slick then and I started using Google instead of DogPile(? I think it was dogpile. That was a long time ago.).
patja 11y ago
You can create a Google account for any email address...no need to create a gmail account just to setup forwarding to somewhere else. Or will those accounts not work with Google Groups?

Hoff 11y ago

Google Groups has various options, one of which is a comparatively poor web-based front-end to Usenet. (Yes, there are still active Usenet groups.) Getting this right across multiple browsers isn't easy, but Google Groups postings to Usenet can be pretty badly formatted. Some history: Google acquired DejaNews and the contents of other usenet archives, and has largely let all of that data languish, with what can sometimes be very weak search abilities of the archives via Google Groups (no hits for XYZ in an active group for XYZ, for instance), and where Google doesn't make the Usenet archives available and visible via the main search Google engine, and has generally become somewhat of problem. Then there are the folks that dredge up a decades-old usenet thread — possibly having no idea what Usenet is — and post to it, and with the usual hilarity that ensues. "Hey, is PDQ still available?" to a post offering PDQ that originally posted in 1997, etc. By some appearances, Google Groups is headed in the same direction as Google Reader.

kahirsch 11y ago

My main complaint is the search interface. When they first put the Deja News archive online, the search function was very good. It even improved over the first few years. One great thing is that USENET posts were dated, so you could look for the first occurrence of a word, phrase, rumor, etc. That's hard to do on the web. Then, a few years ago, the search function started to get worse with every release, with reduced functionality and more and more unreliable results. You might search for a term and see a result from 2005. Then, when you limited results to before 2006, you would get nothing! Around the time they were trying to force Google-plus integration, it became nearly unusable. There used to be an advanced search page[1], but that's gone. When you search within a group, there's a pull-down for advanced search options, but that's missing from the main cross-group search. It seems that search operators[2] may still work. The same kind of degradation happened with Google News Archive and, to a lesser extent, Google Books. [1] https://groups.google.com/advanced_search https://groups.google.com/advanced_search [2] https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2371405 https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2371405