Wired: Deja ‘Revolt’ Against Google

“When Google purchased an archive that contains millions of
Usenet posts from the now defunct-Deja search service earlier this
month, it promptly took a large part of the archive offline until
Google could design a new search interface for the collection.”

“But many people, who relied on having ready access to the
archive, say Usenet archives are too important to be entrusted to a
single commercial concern.”

“Some suggest the best place for the archives would be the
Library of Congress. But one former Deja user wants to create an
open-source, community-based Usenet archive and has asked Google to
contribute the programming code of the old Deja service to the
open-source community and give the project full access to the
Usenet archive.”

“Google spokesman David Krane said that Google would consider
making the Usenet archives available to an alternative archiving
system, but he would not comment on whether the company would make
the programming code accessible as well.”

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