I love the Google Groups user interface: It is easy to understand and you can get started right away (quicker than with all alternatives that I’ve seen so far). It is a great tool whenever teams need to collaborate, because it gives members a choice between RSS, email, and online reading. I’ve used it often when working with groups of students.
Alas, it also shows Google’s modus operandi of running things on auto-pilot. Almost a year ago, out of the blue, Google Groups banned me from their site. Some kind of automatic trigger went off; I was never given a reason. Now, on one hand, I cannot manage my own groups. On the other hand I cannot access any information stored anywhere in Google Groups. If I’m logged in, that is. Thus, I now use Firefox for browsing the web (where I’m logged into Blogger, Google Calendar, etc.) and Safari (where I’m not logged into any Google web apps) whenever I need to look up information that is stored in Google Groups.
I did try many things to fix this: I sent an email to the Google accounts help desk, posted in the Google Groups help groups (well, I sent it to my brother who posted it for me) where this is a frequent topic of discussion, even sent a fax to Google headquarters. All to no avail.
So Google does share a trait that is common in big companies: it does not listen to its customers. Or only when it suits them. Granted, they are popular, have a lot of customers, and are free, but this is still very frustrating. Losing control over one’s own data makes “free” services very expensive.
Alternatives to Google Groups that I know of:
Update 2010-12-23: John Resig (creator of jQuery, among other things) writes about why he abandoned Google Groups in “Google Groups is Dead”.
Alas, it also shows Google’s modus operandi of running things on auto-pilot. Almost a year ago, out of the blue, Google Groups banned me from their site. Some kind of automatic trigger went off; I was never given a reason. Now, on one hand, I cannot manage my own groups. On the other hand I cannot access any information stored anywhere in Google Groups. If I’m logged in, that is. Thus, I now use Firefox for browsing the web (where I’m logged into Blogger, Google Calendar, etc.) and Safari (where I’m not logged into any Google web apps) whenever I need to look up information that is stored in Google Groups.
I did try many things to fix this: I sent an email to the Google accounts help desk, posted in the Google Groups help groups (well, I sent it to my brother who posted it for me) where this is a frequent topic of discussion, even sent a fax to Google headquarters. All to no avail.
So Google does share a trait that is common in big companies: it does not listen to its customers. Or only when it suits them. Granted, they are popular, have a lot of customers, and are free, but this is still very frustrating. Losing control over one’s own data makes “free” services very expensive.
Alternatives to Google Groups that I know of:
- Nabble (version 2 is powerful, but a bit complicated to use)
- Yahoo groups (not tested, yet)
- Groupsite
- Posterous groups [added 2010-12-25]
- Onhub [added 2011-01-10]
- Tangler [added 2011-01-10]
Update 2010-12-23: John Resig (creator of jQuery, among other things) writes about why he abandoned Google Groups in “Google Groups is Dead”.
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