[ccera]

Google Groups is used by such a tiny number of people, and has such a poverty of functionality, that I'm fairly certain it has no measurable effect in suppressing innovation in this area.

Whatever reasons there might be for why forums/discussions aren't getting any better, the existence of Google Groups is not one of them.

[freework]

Google Groups is probably still the most popular hosted Usenet client. Back when I was using Usenet for discussion (2005ish), almost everyone who was still using usenet was using it via Google Groups.

By the way, Google Groups used to have a great UI but over the last fre years they've changed around the design and it is horrible now.