8 ms·
New Google Groups
- tzs 16y agoNothing in there about whether they are going to un-fuck their handling of Usenet groups, which they present under their Google Groups umbrella. There are times, for instance, where a search for something like "Microsoft" or "Bill Gates" in Google's Usenet archive will return something like 6 hits. Really Google? In the nearly 30 years of Usenet posts you have, only 6 times has Microsoft been mentioned? It's not that so many posts mention Microsoft that something glitches out and we only get partial results, because the same will happen when I do searches that I know should return just a few hundred hits. They still often only return 5 or 6. There have been many times when I've been writing a post somewhere such as here or Reddit and recalled some interesting reference from Usenet that would make a great reference but could not get Google to cough it up. A few days later, I'll have no trouble finding it (and the other searches work again). But invariably it breaks again.
- gwern 16y agoI'd also appreciate them restoring the Files section/functionality of Groups, which they recently announced were going to be mass-deleted in a few months.
- kahirsch 16y agoThere are so many bugs in Google Group search! It should be an embarrassment for a company which was founded on search and still has the best web search. I had assumed that Google had just written off Groups as a loss and moved all the developers to profit-making divisions, but evidently not, given this announcement. Even worse is Google patent search. Two months ago, after the Gelernter/Microsoft patent decision, I searched for inventions with "ininventor:Gelernter". Nada. Zero. I reported this via http://www.google.com/support/contact/bin/request.py?contact_type=patents http://www.google.com/support/contact/bin/request.py?contact... I tried it again today. Still broken. And a search for inventor Dean Kamen yields 10 patents, as opposed to 113 on the uspto.gov site. Is there anybody from Google reading this that has enough influence to at least suggest that these search problems be investigated?
- tzs 16y agoFor patents, search on the USPTO site, then take the patent number to pat2pdf.org, which will give you a nice free PDF of the patent.
- hboon 16y agohttp://scirus.com http://scirus.com is pretty good too. Disclaimer: I used to work in the company that produced the search technology behind it.
- wmf 16y agoMaybe it's time for Google to just declare defeat and hand off the Usenet archives to the Internet Archive.
- Kilimanjaro 16y agoUnusable on an iPad.
- sahaj 16y agodid you try the mobile version? https://groups.google.com/forum/m/ https://groups.google.com/forum/m/
- sahaj 16y agolooks great. there is an option to mark threads as read. looks and functions somewhat like Google Reader.
- forgotusername 16y agoIt's as if they want to give the illusion that Groups is in any way maintained by tacking on a half-arsed clone of Reader, and it sucks. Ignoring the impedance mismatch between the borrowed UI and the data it projects, try clicking on a group's Settings link. They should consider devoting their apparently minimal allocation of engineering time to providing an API, and leave it to those with the time and passion to come up with a modern UI.
- clofresh 16y agoHopefully they fixed the rampant spam problems as well
- chrisbroadfoot 16y agoI'm pretty sure this is only a UI change.