It seems that Google Groups has introduced a large number of new Usenet News users. To us old timers, "news" was the only way to have public discussions: early web pages seldom allowed for comments, and the old dial-up bulletin boards hadn't transitioned to the web.
But new Internet users (especially Windows users) often didn't know about newsgroups simply because they had no software: newsreaders existed for Unix, but were text based and although powerful, not usually user friendly. That changed, of course; GUI news readers became available, but because this was still separate software that needed to be installed, and because you had to in the first place know that you even WANTED to read News, many new users were blissfully unaware that any such thing existed at all.
Google Groups changed that. The earliest versions only allowed reading, but posting capability wasn't too far behind, and as Google searching started offering to search the News in addition to web pages, people started realizing what was available to them.
Unfortunately, there were problems. Google itself was part of the problem: whoever wrote the interface obviously hadn't used other News posting software and didn't understand the way the old timers were used to doing things. Part of this was a culture clash too: web pages by now allowed comments, and bulletin board style web pages (forums) were now common. Many users who stumbled across Google News assumed quite naturally that these were just more forums. That misunderstanding caused bad feelings on both sides (Google is probably the best known now, but both Microsoft and AOL made their own contributions to the mess).
If you are a newcomer to News, there are some things you should understand.:
Have you tried Searching this site?
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