Tegger invalid example.com wrote:

David Nebenzahl nobody but.us.chickens wrote
Tegger spake thus:
Metspitzer kilowatt charter.net wrote in

Google has changed from enormously valuable search tool to a
useless piece of crap.

It's still pretty good, but you do need to tailor your search
terms carefully, with judicious use of symbols like +, - and
"".

I agree with his "piece of crap" comment. It's true that Google
has a vast searchable Usenet archive (bought from Deja News),
but their search is often broken beyond repair, no matter what
kind of search terms one uses. Dunno how well it works now, but
I've had bad luck with it in the past.



It works as well as it used to,

It is crap, sometimes obviously so, like when the server does not
work at all. Most of the time the results are totally screwed up.

BUT you MUST use "Advanced Groups Search, AND change that radio
button to "Google Groups" (Usenet-only) from "All Groups"
(includes Web boards and Web boards that repost Usenet
articles).

Anyone who is familiar with searching UseNet should have been
doing that for years. Besides dumping spam on UseNet and totally
messing up the UseNet archive search results, you get tons of
garbage group results nowadays.

When Google Groups first took over from DejaNews, the first
gutting of the search engine was when Google removed the
most-relevant-groups list. That was an omen. The
most-relevant-groups list was useful for determining which is the
best group to post your question to. Google messed up that feature
because, as history has proved, they could not care less about
UseNet.

The uselessness of the UseNet archive search under Google, and the
massive amount of spam Google dumps on us every day, gives Google
Groups a negative value.

Google sucks.
--
















And there are two other good reasons to hate Google Groups: the
mistaken impression that Usenet *is* Google Groups, which they
do little to dispel,



The mistaken impression they /actively promote/, you mean.



and the fact that GG is a huge spam portal, despite Google's
protestations against spam.



Didn't they used to have a slogan that went something like, "Do
no evil"? Whatever happened to that?




--
Tegger



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From: Tegger invalid example.com
Newsgroups: alt.home.repair
Subject: OT Searching Usenet
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:30:51 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: 06303-PR4-000
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