While I also lament what Google Groups has become, let's not rewrite history. By 2001, Dejanews had rebranded as a shopping comparison site, ran out of money, and was on the verge of shutting down. I don't remember many people being upset about Google stepping in to save the archive. And, in the early days, the signs were positive. Google actually cared about it at that point, and still had a good reputation. They expanded the archive with contributions from other sources and worked to improve the search and posting interfaces. Yes, eventually they lost interest and it degraded into the current abomination, but that happened later.