Forum Moderators: open
These new improvements to Google Groups 2 include:
* Group creation: Users can easily create, join, and search email-based
mailing lists; administrative interface enables customized access controls
to designate a group as public or restricted
* Dynamic conversations: Postings appear within 10 seconds and are indexed within 10 minutes
* Enhanced user interface: Users can track and mark favorite topics using the "My Groups" feature and view postings in a variety of ways including by message summary, title, or conversation view
<added>
quote from press release.
</added>
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:20 pm (utc) on May 13, 2004]
It seems like a not-unexpected but still-dramatic move on Google's part.
I have two contrasting thoughts about it, personally:
1) HURRAY! YahooGroups stinks, and I'm so happy to have a (likely) more reliable and less-obtrusive alternative!
2) How the &@#! is Google gonna monetize this? Sure, some people may view the group posts on the Web where it's easy to place AdWords ads. But what about the (I'm guessing) vast majority of folks who'll be reading and sending large amounts of discussion or announcement list e-mails? How will AdSense ads fit there?! If they're placed as HTML, that'll convert plain text e-mails to HTML and will royally peeve lots of people. If Google places AdSense ads in plain text, then the mails won't be that much less obtrusive than Topica mailings.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah. Google Groups is no more just an usenet archive. Right on line, against Yahoo Groups and with an easier and faster interface. whoa!
Google plans to replace the current Google Groups, which is based entirely on Usenet, with the new service, said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products. She declined to pinpoint when the switch-over would occur, saying it would depend on user feedback."We've always envisioned taking Usenet as the base and adding new forums," she said of Google Groups. "We're finally making that vision a reality today."
Or will this dilute Orkut?
Here's a thought. Google offers up free 100mg web sites. Let's call it GooeyCities. They can put adwords on all the pages.
Next up, G can create a banner exchange and call it GooeyClicks.
Where is something genuinely new? Has it all already been invented? Really?
I just don't get it. Yahoo groups works fine for me. What added value does Google bring to this?
Creating alt.* NGs is trivially easy.
1) HURRAY! YahooGroups stinks, and I'm so happy to have a (likely) more reliable and less-obtrusive alternative!
Wow, this may be the first time I've disagreed with ya, ThatAdamGuy. :) I love YahooGroups. Been using it since day one (when they purchased egroups, which had purchased onelist.com, etc.) and manage a couple dozen groups, as well as taking part in another half-dozen or so. The feature set is fantastic.
Sure, there are a couple frustrating aspects of it and a couple features they need to add. If they'd offer a pay version that removes that frustration, I'd write a check today.
Meanwhile, I've been playing with the GG Beta and, like most of G's recent beta releases, it's nowhere near ready for the public to start playing. Got my first group created yesterday but posting a message today failed three times.
2) How the &@#! is Google gonna monetize this?
From my experience, there are a LOT of YG users who use the web site and not the email delivery. And, of course, if you want to search or browse archives, you have to use the web site. G will serve up AdWords ads here and do just fine. :)
Better searching of groups and group messages (have you ever tried to use YahooGroups' search? Horrendous!)
That's one of the aforementioned frustrations that needs to be fixed over at YG.
- No banner ads in e-mails
No biggie....
- Better interface for reading messages on the Web
Better in what way? Yahoo's is fine, aside from the interstitial advertising they show sometimes before you see the message.
- Integration with Usenet groups
Speaking as a YG user, that's one of the last things I'd want to see. Usenet has a super-rich history that I feel needs to be preserved, not folded into GGroups in the name of "vision". But that's just me....
I do hope G can build a better mousetrap. But playing with a beta that's not ready to be played with and doesn't offer anything near the feature set of the competition doesn't make me think I'll be switching mousetraps.
My main gripes with YahooGroups has been its unreliability. In active groups, I've seen messages posted on Tuesday arrive before those sent on Monday, really creating havoc.
Regarding monetization... yes, that's true... with a good search feature, I can indeed imagine many folks going to the site to search for posts, if not directly read them. And for those of us who'll receive individual mails and search them on Gmail... well, there are ads there, too :D.
As for the YahooGroups message reading interface (not even talking about the obnoxious interstitials)... I've just found it to be awkward, especially with regards to threading. And GG2 at least has several different views :)
But right now, GG2 is, despite Google's claims to the contrary, clearly an alpha product. Really too early to make effective judgments about it, I suppose.
My main gripes with YahooGroups has been its unreliability. In active groups, I've seen messages posted on Tuesday arrive before those sent on Monday, really creating havoc.
Yeah, I remember seeing that once or twice in the past few years ... but not for quite a while now. On my lists, it's been a good year or 18 months since we've seen that confusion at YG.
But right now, GG2 is, despite Google's claims to the contrary, clearly an alpha product. Really too early to make effective judgments about it, I suppose.
Agreed.
For months, they have been displaying almost all Yahoo Groups with no cache and no snippet.
I thought perhaps they were having technical problems reading the Yahoo Groups front pages but now it is starting to make sense.
They are probably doing it on purpose to decrement the ranking value of the Yahoo Groups which they have now become competitive with.
Quack, quack.
Often that is caused by moderation settings.
Even in un-moderated groups, individual "problem members" can be put into moderation mode and all new members can be moderated.
This helps cut down on off-topic and spam messages.
It also results in some members' posts being held up in the moderation queue and others (trusted members) posts going right through.
Similar problems will happen in Google's new Groups if they enable sufficient control over moderation settings to prevent spam and off topic messages.
