Google buys Deja.com. I share in Jorn Barger‘s elation at this, which might be lost on anyone who is not a veteran of Usenet newsgroups.

But here’s the bad news one day later:

Message to Google: Usenet is a few useful conversations, hidden
by lots of noise. Duh.

In recent years Deja had tried to orientate the archive to being the
centrepiece of a shopping channel, with a number of tacky
manoeuvres such as inserting adverts into postings. But they’d
never (almost, but not quite) managed to break the main Usenet
archive overnight, which is effectively what Google has done. You’d
almost think Google wants to be thought of as a bunch of
come-lately, VC-flushed hooligans with no inkling of the history or
the culture of the Internet.

Something as simple as maintaining the Deja interface – Google
acquired the software as part of the deal – while signalling a change
of front-end and soliciting user input, could have avoided this PR
disaster for Google. The Register [via Robot Wisdom]