[Grey Wolf]

http://theinquirer.net/?article=21261
Seems Google is offering them free hosting....

[ZylonBane]

Embrace... extend... hmmm...

[Rictor]

I don't see anything wrong with this, aside from my inherent  mistrust of centralization. Probably stemming from the fact that I really have no great issue with the way Google does business, though it may just be my total ignorance on the matter.

[karajorma]

I used to use Dejanews. I have a problem with it.

[kasperl]

Kara: can you please explain?

[karajorma]

Dejanews used to be a really good way to access Usenet. If like me you were on University network and couldn't intall your own NNTP client.

When Google took it over they completely redesigned dejanews until it became google groups. To be honest I don't know why they didn't just make a rival to Dejanews because google groups has absolutely nothing in common with Dejanews.

 In fact the only reason they bought Dejanews appears to be precisely so they could plow it into the ground and not have a rival.

All in all that doesn't give me a lot of confidence about what they might now do to Wikipedia.

[ZylonBane]

Deja News was already going out of business. Google bought them to preserve the coolest database in the history of the Internet.

The new Google Groups Beta interface does suck the sweat off a dead man's dead donkey's balls though. That's why I switched to Google Canada a few weeks ago.