Google Revises Usenet Search

michaelmalak writes "Wednesday night, Google Groups announced in a thread the rollout of their revised 20-year Usenet archive search engine. Among the various 'improvements': ability to search by date has been eliminated, as has the ability to deep link to a single post. See the announcement thread for others' reaction." An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has published some interesting insights into what makes Google tick. In this lengthy article, Google's vice-president of engineering, Urs Hölzle delves into the nuts and bolts behind Google's operations, what back-up mechanisms and hardware setup is in place and even some interesting homegrown technology like the Google File System (GFS)."

Progress?

[danielrm26]

Among the various 'improvements': ability to search by date has been eliminated, as has the ability to deep link to a single post.

Well damn - I hope they don't "improve" it too much more.

hmmmm

[meatspray]

"Spelling: Google wrote its own spell checker, and maintains that nobody know as many spelling errors as it does. The amount of computing power available at the company means it can afford to begin teaching the system which words are related -- for instance "Imperial", "College" and "London". It's a job that many CPU years, and which would not have been possible without these thousands of machines. "When you have tons of data and tons of computation you can make things work that don't work on smaller systems," said Hölzle. One goal of the company now is to develop a better conceptual understanding of text, to get from the text string to a concept. "

Next up: Grammar and Content

500 error?

[Saint Aardvark]

Oh my god, we Slashdotted Google!

(Gathers canned goods, candles, heads for cave)

Re:500 error?

[aurb]

Oh my god, we Slashdotted Google!

We bastards!

Re:Progress?

[albeit unknown]

We are altering the deal.

Pray we don't alter it any further.

Re:Progress?

[stupidfoo]

Good point, why would I ever want to download "things" at a fairly constant 2.6-2.8Mbps (on my 3 Mb connection) from newsgroups when I can do so at a very inconsitent 50-100Kbps from a torrent?

And from torrents I get the added benefit of not only downloading the file, but uploading to everyone else and broadcasting my IP address all over the place.

Re:RTFM

[Jucius Maximus]

I have officially bit off my foot after putting it too far into my mouth. In my country, only old people really RTFA in soviet russia with hot grits. Have a nice day.

Re:Progress?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you go public.

Re:Progress?

[C10H14N2]

...well, they do appear to think that the only pr0n anyone will want is in:

alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.female.genitalia.l ar ge

bastards.

Re:First use of "spam" on USENET, found via Google

[Finuvir]

You changed your name from Paul Czarnecki to Jeannette Angell when you got married? Sounds like you did more than get married.

Re:Total catastrophe, a complete and utter misstep

[Alan Hicks]

Search for 'latex', and there are links to the right to...

...alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bondage.latex ?

Greatest Troll Ever

[CowardX10]

At least they extended their archives back to the 1980s. In the good ol' days, even the trolls were better. My nomination for Greatest Troll Ever [google.com].