The Google graveyard is expansive but they most certainly didn't kill Usenet. Spam put Usenet on life support and ISPs dropping NNTP hosting pulled the plug. B

The Google graveyard is expansive but they most certainly didn't kill Usenet. Spam put Usenet on life support and ISPs dropping NNTP hosting pulled the plug. By the late 90s spam killed actual conversations on Usenet. Eternal September had already raised the noise floor but spam just got out of control. First ISPs dropped retention of even text-only hierarchies and then by the early 2000s dropped NNTP hosting entirely. So even people willing to wade through the spam had to go hunting for independent Usenet hosting. Google didn't have anything to do with either of those things.