Joe Barta writes:
Somewhere along the line, someone else thought it would also be a
groovy idea to gather up all those past USENET discussions, along with
all the new ones that are being generated every day, and put them in a
big fat searchable database. And then make that database accessible
with a web browser. Several years ago there was a website called
DejaNews that did just that. I don't know how they did it or if they
were the first, but they did it and it was cool.

Actually DejaNews didn't attempt to gather Usenet postings from before
they existed; they just retained everything posted during their existence.
At first they made the whole lot available, then they cut back the free
service to just the most recent 6-12 months.

I still miss their "one line per article" search result format.

As with many things on the web, after a few years it fizzled. They
probably ran out of money and they went offline.

Fast forward to a couple years ago, and Google announces that they've
bought the USENET archive that belonged to DejaNews and soon they will
be using their wonderous search technology on all those old
discussions and make them accessible from groups.google.com.

And then after *that*, they incorporated old articles from several
*other* archives -- ones that had never been publicly available --
thus providing content (although with some gaps in coverage) from as
far back as 1981, just 2 years after the start of Usenet.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "It is one thing to praise discipline, and another
| to submit to it." -- Miguel de Cervantes, 1613

My text in this article is in the public domain.