Re: Free at Last !!

On Tue, 27 Feb 2024 00:02:52 GMT, PX wrote:

>> 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.

Wow this is cool!  I never thought I'd see the day either.  I hope it stays 
underground forever.