Google Revises Usenet Search 628
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)."
Big brother trips (Score:1, Informative)
OMG.. it's truly awful. (Score:4, Informative)
Luckily the rot hasn't spread to the national Googles yet, so you can still use Google UK [google.co.uk] if you need it.. at least until they ruin that too.
HW summary overview (Score:5, Informative)
- Over four billion Web pages, each an average of 10KB, all fully indexed.
- Up to 2,000 PCs in a cluster.
- Over 30 clusters.
- One petabyte of data in a cluster -- so much that hard disk error rates of 10-15 begin to be a real issue.
- Sustained transfer rates of 2Gbps in a cluster.
- An expectation that two machines will fail every day in each of the larger clusters.
- No complete system failure since February 2000.
Now, 2,000 machines in a cluster, plus 1PB data, plus 2Gbps in a cluster times 30 clusters comes to:
- "Over" 60,000 PCs (!)
- "Over" 30PB data storage
- "Over" 60Gbps bandwidth
Also interesting:
- An expectation that two machines will fail every day in each of the larger clusters.
- No complete system failure since February 2000.
thought I was going crazy (Score:1, Informative)
Work around for filtering search by date (Score:3, Informative)
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl
Re:Work around for filtering search by date (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, it makes it difficult to sort by relevance *within* a date range.
Re:OMG.. it's truly awful. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm believe that the "new groups" are not new usenet groups, but merely a yahoo-groups clone on the side, which gets he same interface as the one they provide for usenet groups.
The old groups interface rocked. This is a major step in the wrong direction in my book.
Direct Linking is still possible... (Score:5, Informative)
Navigate to the thread, for example this [google.com] comp.arch thread. Choose the post you want to link to, and click on "Show Options". Two of the options are "print", which is a link to a "printable" version of the article, and "Show original", which is a link to the article with all the headers.
One more step (or simple URL hack) from this display is "view parsed" which gives a friendly HTML version -- for example, try this link [google.com].
Re:Total catastrophe, a complete and utter misstep (Score:2, Informative)
They have dumbed this down a bit, but if you are looking for a specific group it's not hard to find what you're looking for.
Search for 'latex', and there are links to the right to TeX specific news groups.
no real message threading
Click the "view as tree" link above the postings. This gives you the same type of two pain threading the old interface had.
I will miss the search by date stuff though.
Re:Direct Linking is still possible... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:B-E-T-A (Score:1, Informative)
Deep linking to a single post can work (Score:3, Informative)
I had a link to usenet post in a recent blog [amon-hen.com] entry. Try this [google.com] (sometimes there's a server error, but otherwise it seems to work). The trick is to click on "Show Original" and use that link.
Re:thought I was going crazy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:RTFM (Score:5, Informative)
What Google Hardware Actually Looks Like (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, as we were walking around the 150,000+ square foot datacenter floor, when a guy came by, pushing a very odd looking rack.
It resembled a bread tray, 20 shelves if I counted correctly, with completely naked main boards sitting on them. It looked to be 4 machines per row (counting the power supplys). Each had one IDE disk sitting on a gel pad, strapped in with velcro. I personally watched them wheel 4 of these racks right by me back into the dark "Google" corner of the datacenter. Our tour guide finally gave in.
Him: "Well, you've seen them now!"
Me: "What do you mean?"
Him: "Thats google!"
Definitely the highlight of my day!
Send a complaint message here (Score:3, Informative)
If everyone who posted a comment took out 60 seconds to send a complaint message, I think it would make a difference.
Correction (Score:2, Informative)
This is incorrect. It's still possible to link to a single post - it's just the old URLs for a single post have now broken. For example, http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=E_-cnfXDhMqTV rTdXTWc-w%40speakeasy.net&oe=UTF-8&output=gpla in [google.com], which used to be a link to a post in alt.fan.cecil-adams has now become http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.fan.cecil- adams/msg/99339841838c82ea?dmode=source [google.com].
Next to every post in a thread is an options button. One of the options is "Show Original", which links to a single post, with all original headers intact.
I'll miss the ability to search by date, though.
Groups is back to the old format (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Deep linking still works for me... (Score:1, Informative)
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?selm=33e2154e .5216 53%40news.clara.net [google.com]
Although it looks slightly Disneyfied...
There's still hope... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What Google Hardware Actually Looks Like (Score:4, Informative)
Once, said Hölzle, "someone disconnected an 80-machine rack from a GFS cluster, and the computation slowed down as the system began to re-replicate and we lost some bandwidth, but it continued to work. This is really important if you have 2,000 machines in a cluster." If you have 2000 machines then you can expect to see two failures a day.
Looks like my numbers were correct. 20 shelves * 4 machines per shelf = 80 machines per rack.
It automagically changes my query... (Score:1, Informative)
Google is still adjusting their site (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Direct Linking is still possible... (Score:3, Informative)
ttp://groups-beta.google.com/groups?selm=modera
That URL isn't linked from the discussion, and it refreshes to the "proper" location, so you have to construct it yourself by cutting/pasting the message-ID. But it still works.
Deep linking is still very much possible! (Score:5, Informative)
Each message in a thread has a named HTML anchor, try this [google.com] for instance. It will show the whole thread, but position you at an exact message in the middle.
The only problem is there is no easy way to get this URL, you have to find the anchor by looking at the HTML source (Firefox's "View Selection Source" feature helps a lot).
Also, if you click on the "Options" link by the individual message, you get a "Show original" link, which shows just the message, verbatim [google.com].
And from there, you can click on "View parsed", and see just the pretty message [google.com], without the rest of the thread.
So there's your deep-linking. I agree it's not obvious how to do it at the moment, but the ability is obviously still there. Give it some time, it's still a beta!
These quirks and the "Server Error" bugs are to be expected, they'll work it out.
As for the new browsing interface itself, I kinda like it. It integrates and borrows some stuff from their excellent Gmail interface.
It hides quoted text by default (you can expand it with single click), so you don't have to scroll through some morons quoting of a whole message just to add a few words, it keeps a history of groups you recently visited, it allows you to bookmark topics you are interested in, etc. I do find it an improvement over the old interface.
The only thing is the missing date search, I agree there, that was definitely useful feature. If enough people complain, maybe they'll bring it back.
Also, someone else complained that you cannot browse by group anymore... bullshit, it's staring you right in the face, it's the "Browse all of Usenet" link.
Re:RTFM (Score:3, Informative)
He's wrong, and not informative at all.
Re:Progress? (Score:2, Informative)
You *can* still deep link (Score:1, Informative)
It is still possible to deep link to a Usenet post but they've done a pretty good job of hiding it.
On a topic page, (say, this one [google.com]), use the 'show options' link and then hit 'Show original'. The raw Usenet post appears in a new window. You can use 'View Parsed' to see a more nicely formatted version.
Re:Dumb (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't the slightest idea where the original poster got their information.
Re:OMG.. it's truly awful. (Score:3, Informative)
In the majority of WHAT? The only people using Usenet nowadays (or even knowing about it) ARE those who appreciate it. Usenet is MUCH less well known than you might believe, and I would say that well over 90% of Google users have NO IDEA what that third link above the query box means. It's frightening even how many programmers I meet that have never heard of Usenet, and amongst those that know about it, how few really use it for research. Frankly, without Usenet I'd be a much less productive developer, and the day they fatally cripple it Google will have a revolt on their hands. Frankly, I want Deja back!
Changed the wrong thing. (Score:1, Informative)
You basically assign your works to google under a public domain type license. They are free to do whatever they want with it.
The gmail is not like this! Why are the groups?
Re:Groups is back to the old format (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Progress? (Score:5, Informative)
Alright people, you can stop overreacting. They just rearranged some things, that's all.
There's a link at the top of the thread to turn on the left-hand tree frame.
Deep-linking to a single post [google.com] is still very much possible.
And I highly doubt that a search-by-date feature is going to go missing for long in a 20-year archive. This is, after all, a BETA.
As per usual, Slashdot editors didn't even think it worth their time to follow a single link to see if the submitter wasn't trolling.
Re:Dumb (Score:3, Informative)