Like Dejanews all over again

The archive, a trove of 500 million newsgroup postings dating back to 1995, began as Dejanews. In 1999, the service was renamed Deja.com when the site's focus was changed to a "precision-buying service," offering product ratings and reviews. Though the Usenet archive was the site's best feature, it was pruned down to one year of Usenet history. Google hopes to return the archive (groups.google.com) to its former glory by making all 500 million messages searchable once again.

"Our top priority is to build a Usenet search service that's even more useful than what was offered on the Deja.com site," says David Krane, a Google spokesman. "Our goal is to offer the ability to search the entire five-year archive. We plan to offer an interface that is more powerful and easier to use than the classic Deja interface."

Other features will include enhanced newsgroup browsing and the ability to post messages. The company has not decided whether other previously available features, such as personal home pages and message tracking, will be reinstated.

The transition to Google has ticked off some fans of the archive, who have complained about missing features, broken links, and thousands of missing messages.

One vocal user, preferring to remain anonymous and calling himself "Deja Refugee," says that the Usenet archive has historical value and is too important to be left in the hands of a single commercial entity. He proposes an open-source Usenet archive, dubbed Delà News, to be stored by educational institutions or the Library of Congress. Details are available at delanews.sourceforge.net.