February 13 2001

Google buys Deja.com

The Google search engine has bought Deja.com, the only search engine left on the planet dedicated to Usenet searching.

The Usenet is a huge collection of discussion groups outside the Internet proper. Most Internet Service providers will, however, fetch messages from many of these so-called "newsgroups", allowing Net users to access the discussions from their own servers. To do this Internet surfers must use dedicated newsreader software. There are newsreaders included in Explorer as well as Netscape.

Deja.com not only let you search in its Usenet archive of messages, you could also take part in current discussions on its website.

Deja.com recently left its strategy of turning the site into an advanced shopping portal, again focusing on newsgroup searching (see "Deja.com is back to square one: Usenet searching"). This was not enough to save the company. Obviously we are facing another example of a dot com company failing as banner ad sales fail to generate the revenue needed to run an enterprise of this kind.

By the end of May visitors should be able to post messages to the discussions at the Google site. This is not possible at the present time. The Deja.com site has already been closed, and anyone trying to access www.deja.com will be redirected to the Google beta site at groups.google.com. This means that for the moment there is no Web based access to newsgroup discussions.

You may, however, use the Google site to search for messages. There are some shortcomings in the area of advanced searching, but it seems Google is planning to rectify this shortly.

The good news is that Google intends to include all 500 million messages entered since 1995 into the searchable within three months. Lately the Deja.com version has contained but some six months worth of discussions.

May this be a reminder to those of you who take part in newsgroup discussions. Whatever you say in these fora will never be forgotten. Also note that spammers love to harvest these discussions for email addresses.

It will be interesting to see how this new move affects participation in Usenet discussions. Web-based discussion fora, email based groups, and online chat rooms have to a large extent replaced the discussions taking place on the Usenet.

• Web search engine Google buys Deja.com's Usenet discussion archives (AP)
• Google Acquires Usenet Discussion Service and Significant Assets from Deja.com (Google press release)
• Google's Newsgroup Search Page (beta)
• Google Usenet Advanced Search (beta)
• Monday Morning Head Explosion: Google Buys Deja.com (ResearchBuzz)
• Deja-vu Internet blues: Google snaps up Deja.com assets (ZDNet)

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