Comment About Google Access

The reason I did not label this post Off Topic is that many people have
commented that they no longer have access to this newsgroup through Google.
I figure that newsgroup access is ON TOPIC for a newsgroup. After all, if
you can't access the group or post to it, you have been effectively
excluded.

I know that some folks have been having trouble accessing this newsgroup
through Google. Apparently, this is not the only group having this
difficulty. Over at rec.guns, the following message was posted. It sheds
some light on this topic. I am certain that it applies to many more groups
than just rec.guns. (Are woodworkers universally lumped into the same
category as gun enthusiasts?)

Which is why you need a real newsreader and newsgroup access. It appears
that Google may be dropping this access soon if they already haven't. And
needless to say, they never told anybody.
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This is a quick program note to keep you up to date on what's going
on with the low levels of traffic in our group. Since the first of
this month, Google has not processed any usenet news posts into its
web presentation. As a consequence, many of our regular readers do
not have access to us, and may not even know what's happened. We do
not know when or if this situation will change.

The detailed version of this news follows.

As you may know, news groups circulate traffic on the net in a very
different way than was anticipated by these new-fangled web browsers.
Ordinarily one uses separate programs to read usenet messages, which
many ISPs provide as a service to their customers. Some web browsers
can read news traffic, but only with extra plug-ins and some bit of
configuring to point the tools to a suitable "news host."

For a number of years Google has served as a news host by turning
news traffic into a web-based presentation. Thus it was that many
people came to rely on Google in order to read usenet groups (like
ours) since they only needed an ordinary browser (and gmail account
in order to post.)

The development this month is that Google stopped doing this. What
this means is that for people who once accessed news via Google,
rec.guns just winked off the air without notice. It likely appears
to them that we just simply stopped processing posts.

I've seen no official comment from Google on this, and the only
informal comment we've received behind the scenes is that they know
about it. We don't know what that means for the most part, and there
is no expectation about when this might be fixed, if ever. At this
point it could very well be a low profile policy decision to simply
halt the service and allow criticism to bounce off the hard external
Google hull. There is no question that corporate strategists may see
hunkering down and ignoring complaints as a way to dissipate short
term heat without lasting effect. It doesn't become news or lasting
until they would comment.

Still, it could just be a bug that they'll get around to fixing at some
point too. This situation is entering its second week.

To proactively address one important point: Unquestionably Google has
been hostile to gun ownership and specifically this news group in the
past. It once was the case that I could recover the cost of maintaining
our FAQ site by use of Google ad traffic, but they put a stop to it just
as soon as someone drew attention to us as a site that 'depicted guns'.
I was unable to get them to tell me how to "repair" the site in order to
have them do business with us again. (I have simply paid for the site
out of pocket ever since.) This was blatant and discriminatory policy
on the part of Google, reflecting a prejudice against lawful activities
that happen to involve firearms. The fact that they were willing to do
business with sites involving pornography, just not guns, shows this is
bias based on social interests. Nevertheless, the present interruption
of service is newsgroups wide - at this point, all groups are affected,
not just this gun group.

Thanks to all the hardy souls who are sticking with us via the far
more traditional net news tools (or perhaps other web presentations
of which we are unaware!) We are still processing traffic daily -
just a lot less of it these days.

MODERATOR
rec.guns
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