I hate that you can't even view Google groups without an account. It also requires us to do nothing but show text. To me groups and blogger has always represented what a terrible web application is.
I don't like obscuring the original domain but agree that Google Groups URLs posted to HN have consistently been annoying.
As an example, I wanted to do some research on early language features of Python (e.g. around 1993). The info is in Usenet postings of that time, surely present in Google Groups years ago. Now, I can't find anything useful. A advanced search using dates doesn't return anything. Their user interface is horribly bad compared to what it used to be.
Another example: I did some research on Deep Blue and Deep Thought, after reading Crazy Bird's book. With the old Google Groups, I could follow the discussion of the Deep Blue tournament, in chronological order. There was all sorts of interesting things like computer chess programmers speculating on how Deep Blue worked and people posting analysis of chess positions. All that is now gone or at least not searchable.
So sad that all of this knowledge has apparently disappeared. There was loads of information shared on Usenet and the storage space required to preserve it would be trivial.
How it should work following a “build your first web app” tutorial:
1. User opens page
2. You detect an old login cookie and discretely ask if they want to login
3. If they do so, you see the previous page with more UI (e.g. subscribe, reply, etc.)
How it works now:
1. Users opens page
2. Instead of looking at the content they wanted to see, the user is automatically redirected over to a login page with a mandatory full two-factor check even if you've recently logged in to other Google properties
3. After completing that process, you're dumped on the groups.google.com homepage 4. Since there were a bunch of redirects, you have to know how to use your browser's history to go back 3-4 pages because simply hitting back will just redirect you to the homepage again.