How did it profit from the Usenet archives? Genuinely curious.

goatinaboat · on July 28, 2020

How did it profit from the Usenet archives? Genuinely curious.

Dejanews was the seed material for Google Groups, any profit derived from that (ads) was from content posted to Usenet by people who never intended for it to be used for that.

joshuamorton · on July 28, 2020

Groups doesn't (and didn't ever?) Show ads as far as I know. So you're reaching for second or third order effects at best.

mtkd · on July 28, 2020

You think that realtime ad impressions is all they get from you reading granular forum posts?

Sadly, even in 2020, nothing has yet replaced what Deja was at the time it got acquired and destroyed.

joshuamorton · on July 28, 2020

> So you're reaching for second or third order effects at best.

I'm curious what second or third order effects you think a usenet archive had on GG.

mtkd · on July 28, 2020

From G side they gained users interacting with 50K+ topics and occasionally posting views, sentiment etc. (and likely all Deja News historic interactions)

In addition to the search history, email content, geo location etc. G have for many people

happycube · on July 28, 2020

Deja did a fairly good job at destroying itself beforehand - not just financially.