[Hoff]

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.