Hacker News Reader

Comment by zensavona | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this what Google Groups is used for? (what's different / lacking there? I'm of the age where I remember SourceForge as somewhere I would sometimes download things from as a young teenager but nothing more than that)

View on HN

Yes, Google Groups is very close to what's needed - unfortunately, it's proprietary and Google doesn't really maintain it, it's only a matter of time it goes the way of Reader.

FWIW, Google Groups powers email distribution lists for Gmail for Work. Or at least, the two are strongly linked.

At this point, unlike Reader, there's real cash behind the functionality. It's possible they could just fold it into Gmail, I guess, but with other mail interfaces like Inbox popping up in the Google ecosystem it seems if anything they're trying not to shoehorn too much more into a flagship product.

My guess is Groups will stick around for a while yet.

That's interesting, but it doesn't reassure me much. The infrastructure behind Groups may be in use, it doesn't stop Google from shutting the UI down.

To be clear: it's not just the infrastructure; the set up a Google Apps mailing list you use the Google Groups UI.

Well, they already shut down the free tier of Google Apps, which was also used by some OSS projects.

So it’s possible.

Didn't they grandfather in those that were in before that point?

Yes! I currently still use my apps.google.com account for free.

As someone using Gmail for Work: This is one of the things I absolutely detest about Gmail for Work. The Groups interface is absolutely horrendous, and we don't want groups, we want simple email distribution lists.

Do you know if people can manage their subscriptions themselves? I seem to be able to add "Admins" to a group, but I don't know what that does.

IMHO, the UX of Groups is really annoying. I'm not really sure why, it just feels so cumbersome.

Don't forget than when they do maintain it they make the UX worse. Every damn time. Over the years it's gone from mediocre to downright horrible.

Also, Groups doesn't have the ability to import archives from my previous list. (I'm in exactly the same position of wanting to migrate away from SourceForge, and the mailing list is the last thing remaining.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com