I love Google and I'm thrilled beyond belief that they bought the deja.com usenet archives.

So I've been really shocked whenever I've heard tell of the crazy people who are upset with Google. It makes no sense whatsoever to me.

Rafe's rant on the subject rocks (and are my sentiments exactly):

The continued bitching about Google's purchase of the Deja archive frankly amazes me. I don't know whether any of the whiners have noticed, but deja.com is gone. So it looks like the site was going to be taken over by Google or by nobody. There's no question that Google's search interface needs to get better, but if it doesn't, what right have they to complain? It's not like they're paying Google for the service. And the demands that Google turn over the source code to Deja's site or the archive itself to a public body are completely laughable. All the ongoing ranting about how the Usenet archive should be a public resource is moronic. Yeah, maybe it should be, and it would be if anyone had bothered to get off their ass and archive all of the postings over the past 5 years or so. Nobody did, though, did they? And in fact, Usenet was used for an awfully long time without anyone archiving any of it. It's only since Deja started doing it that Usenet users even expected to have such an archive. So, if you're one of the complainers, get over your sense of entitlement and move on.

The complainers have really short memories. Sixty percent of the Deja archives (1995-1998) have been offline for s long time (I think it's over a year), and Google is bringing them *back*.

The complainers have really short memories. Sixty percent of the Deja archives (1995-1998) have been offline for s long time (I think it's over a year), and Google is bringing them *back*.