I miss dejanews - anyone remember that before Google bought them? They had full search, it's a shame Google let that go. Their search went back to pretty much the beginning of net news. Does that exist anywhere anymore?
At least some of the Usenet archives are still online in Google Groups and searchable. Can't vouch for completeness of the search index though, it looks pretty wonky for stuff from the early 1990s. Anyway, example working archive link I found via search: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.os.minix/tor...
Don't be too hard on Google's acquisition of Deja. I wasn't working at Google at the time, but heard from many colleagues when I joined that the Deja acquisition was quite chaotic because Deja was just about to shut down entirely when Google picked it up rather than let it disappear. It's a shame they don't do better with the Usenet archive now, but it's clearly not Google's business anymore.
Dejanews was simply fantastic. When Google embraced and extinguished it and then later killed the discussion filter from its front page I finally realized the Internet as we knew it until the late 90s/early 2K was dead. It transitioned from an instrument I could use to find people exchanging genuine opinions on stuff to a way to inundate my search result with biased people promoting or selling that stuff.
I remember dejanews, but don't remember liking the experience. I remember being very excited when Google acquired them.
I remember being super bummed when bitrot set in. Posts I knew existed just couldn't be found.
As someone who got their first car running by way of Usenet archives (a 69 Beetle), I always loved how well it was archived compared to all the web bulletin boards that fragment so much information as they quickly rot year after year.
Don't be too hard on Google's acquisition of Deja. I wasn't working at Google at the time, but heard from many colleagues when I joined that the Deja acquisition was quite chaotic because Deja was just about to shut down entirely when Google picked it up rather than let it disappear. It's a shame they don't do better with the Usenet archive now, but it's clearly not Google's business anymore.