Re: Free at Last !!

> On 2024-02-26 15:18:48 +0000, PX said:
> 
>> 	Free from Google that is. From now on anything I post here will 
only 
>> be accessible through
>> a newsreader. Usenet just got a lot more private and text posts are 
>> pretty much invisible to the world
>> wide web. Before all text groups were indexed by Google groups and 
>> showed up in Google search. The remaining
>> free indexers like NZB King never index text posts in binary groups 
so, 
>> damn, usenet has gone underground as
>> far as text posts are concerned. And, except for a few groups, 
binaries 
>> are poorly indexed too by both free
>> and paid indexers. Oh, and there's the spam issue too. All the holy 
>> roller material that Ivan used to post
>> here was done through Google groups. They were cross posted across 
>> multiple groups. I'd like to think it was
>> me posting "Cunt Comics" that made him finally give up on this one but 
>> it could have been Google starting to
>> crack down too. Anyway, a new age is upon us and I, personally, am 
>> delighted that this post won't show up on
>> the web.
> 
> I had no idea this was even a thing. Here's hoping there are few 
> unintended consequences ... although there probably will be many.
> 
> Meanwhile, though:
> 
> “You can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content 
> posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups.”
> 
> As someone who tries to avoid Google, it will be interesting to see 
> from how far back one can actually retrieve content that way.
> 
> If at all.

I checked the google groups listing of this group and it says 5607 
articles but you can only go back 1 page at a time. Google seems to have 
eliminated the option to jump through pages of search results in general 
with only a next button. My newsreader says around 1700 articles with the 
oldest being article #2 posted on July 1st 2003 so it looks like I've got 
it all and access it easily. Text retention ends around June 2003 and 
binary on August 15, 2008 for the most part. Google does have older 
content archived but the trend is to make that material less easy to find 
even if it's there. Google groups doesn't handle binaries well at all so 
the parts numbers of my binary posts are inflating their figure.



-- 
PX=Paradox