Google Buys Deja Discussion Boards

Google took over Deja.com's online discussion service, adding more than 500 million wide-ranging messages to one of the Web's most extensive search engines. Financial terms between the privately held companies weren't disclosed.

In 1995, Deja ¡ª originally known as Dejanews ¡ª created a quick and easy way to read and post messages on an online forum, known as Usenet, which doesn't use the same computer code that powers the World Wide Web.

While opening up Usenet's discussion boards to Web browsers, New York-based Deja also created an archive of all the messages posted in the newsgroups. Deja's technology allows Web surfers to perform topical searches to focus on specific discussion threads.

The Usenet messages delve into diverse topics, ranging from discussions on rocket science to popular culture.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google views the addition of the Deja archives as another significant step toward creating a one-stop source for online information.

Since it started in 1998, Google has developed one of the world's most popular search engines, using a method that sifts through more than 1.3 billion Web pages to list results based on the relevancy to the search request.

Searching the Usenet message boards "is a way to look up information and see what people are saying about certain things without dealing with all the commercial aspects of the Web," said Google President Sergey Brin.

The Deja database is so large that only the past six months of messages are now available through Google at groups.google.com.

By the end of May, the rest of the archives should be transferred to Google's database and visitors should be able to post messages to the discussions, Brin said.

Deja has been on the ropes for months. The company laid off one-third of its workforce in September and in December sold its comparison shopping site to Half.com, which is owned by eBay. In the process, Deja's payroll shrank from about 140 employees in September to 20 today.

None of Deja's remaining workers are guaranteed jobs with Google, which has slightly more than 100 employees. Google will close Deja's technology hub in Austin, Texas by the end of this week.

Deja aborted a long-delayed initial public offering of stock last June. The company had lost $19.5 million from its inception through March 1999, the last time that it disclosed its financial results.












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