Re: Proposal for rabbit-semi from EmbeddedRelated.com

> While I ultimately don't care what you decide, he is not being as open about his intentions as he should be.  He is not hiding them, but he's not outwardly stating them either.
> 
> By doing what he asks, he will be the only open source of the archives that shows up in Google, so he is more likely to drive traffic to his site and increase his ad revenue.
> 
> Google doesn't care about duplicate search result entries as much as they care about other site duplicating their content and costing them ad revenue.
> 
> Google's algorithms would also probably list Yahoo Groups well before his site as well, making it less likely people will make it down the list to see his site.
> 
> As to this group specific, I see two risks.  One, people are less likely to learn about this group.  Two, even if they do, they are more likely to go to his site to view the messages instead of going through the process of registering and trying to join the group.
> 
> I don't see it as any benefit to the group, but the risks are not that big, especially since the group has tailed off over the last 6-8 years.

Hello Matthew,

Stephane here, publisher of EmbeddedRelated.

I understand that money has a polarizing effect. You are absolutely right that ultimately, EmbeddedRelated is a business and the goal is to increase the traffic and with traffic comes more advertising revenues.  
But when I succeed, it also benefits the Embedded Systems community: I invest a good chunk of the advertising revenues to improve the site, attract more bloggers and pay them better, offer rewards for code snippets, etc.  
So at the end of the day, supporting the request to make the archives private is supporting a website devoted to helping embedded systems experts by offering good and useful content.  
And I believe the effect on the group would be minimal.  People who find the archives through EmbeddedRelated can easily subscribe to the group by entering their email address in the subscribe box on the left.  

In any event, I would like to salute Tom for his integrity and for asking the group's opinion on the matter.

Stephane