Google Groups
Ranked 6 of 6 forum software by recommenders
Recommended as an easy way to share announcements and as a searchable archive of Usenet-style discussions. Critics often raise privacy concerns and legitimate messages wrongly marked as spam.
Recommended as an easy way to share announcements and as a searchable archive of Usenet-style discussions. Critics often raise privacy concerns and legitimate messages wrongly marked as spam.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 40%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Searchable archive of old discussions
“suddenly you could search comp.lang.whatever and usually find someone who'd asked”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “747s and Coding Agents” “google groups solved it for example”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “The Fedora project grapples with change”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Privacy concerns, surveillance business model
“it’s not the most privacy-minded solution”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Has anybody moved their local community off of Facebook groups?” “All centralized proprietary surveillance capitalism products, and no decentralized/FOSS options.”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “The coolest anti-surveillance tools at Defcon [video]” Google kills or absorbs older communities
“google virtually killed that, too, when they started peddling google groups”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Google is dead. Where do we go now?” “This is exactly what they tried to do with Usenet via Google Groups.”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)” “within a couple of years it'd turned into Google Groups”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Usenet Archives” Google drops services and withholds data
“And then axed Google Groups and refused to release the data.”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “Usenet rewind archive search engine” “Google has had memory loss.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Usenet Archives”
Other forum software people recommend
The four most recommended other forum software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 6 forum software, rankedWhat people said
14 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“And then axed Google Groups and refused to release the data.”
“I was getting "too many requests" errors 4 out of 5 times clicking a result”
“All centralized proprietary surveillance capitalism products, and no decentralized/FOSS options.”
“This is exactly what they tried to do with Usenet via Google Groups.”
“google groups solved it for example”
“Easy enough for organizations to use for sharing announcements.”
“even google groups I'm in that are technical get obviously-not-spam messages tagged as spam!”
“within a couple of years it'd turned into Google Groups”
“Google has had memory loss.”
“suddenly you could search comp.lang.whatever and usually find someone who'd asked”
“it’s not the most privacy-minded solution”
“google virtually killed that, too, when they started peddling google groups”
“Google Groups doesn't have the original Usenet posts, so formatting is all screwed up.”
“We tried switching over to a Google Groups backed mailing list (around 2022), but by then the damage had been done”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.