20 Year Usenet Archive Now Available
New! Google has fully integrated the past 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups, which now offers access to more than 700 million messages dating back to 1981. We believe this to be the most complete collection of Usenet articles ever assembled and a fascinating first-hand historical account.
We are compiling some especially memorable articles and threads in the timeline below. For example, read Tim Berners-Lee's announcement of what became the World Wide Web [ http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6487%40cernvax.cern.ch ] or Linus Torvalds' first post about his "pet project" [ http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1991Oct5.054106.4647%40klaava.Helsinki.FI ]. If you come across other noteworthy posts while searching the archive, please forward them to us at usenet-timeline@google.com. Please note that while your own first post was undoubtedly of great personal historical value, we will only be able to include submissions of interest to a wide range of users.
Thanks, and enjoy your trip back to the golden age of Usenet.
----- 12 May 1981 Oldest usenet article in the Google Groups Archive | -------- May 1981 First mention of Microsoft | -------- Jun 1981 First mention of Microsoft MS-DOS | -------- Aug 1981 First review of the IBM-PC | -------- Oct 1981 TCP/IP Digest #1 | | -------- Jun 1982 First mention of Star Wars Episode 6 | -------- Jul 1982 First mention of a compact disc | -------- Aug 1982 First mention of the Commodore 64 | -------- Aug 1982 First mention of Apple's Lisa and Macintosh products | -------- Nov 1982 Early reference to emoticons | -------- Dec 1982 First thread about AIDS | | -------- Jul 1983 First mention of Madonna | -------- Sep 1983 Stallman's announcement of GNU | -------- Nov 1983 First mention of Microsoft Windows | | -------- Jan 1984 First reference to Apple's Super Bowl commercial | -------- Apr 1984 The kremvax hoax | -------- Aug 1984 First mention of the Commodore Amiga | | -------- Jan 1986 First mention of the Challenger tragedy | -------- Feb 1986 First mention of the MIR space station | -------- Sep 1986 Gene Spafford's comments on the Great Renaming | | -------- Mar 1988 First mention of the term 'search engine' | -------- Nov 1988 The first warning about the Morris Internet Worm | -------- Nov 1988 Gene Spafford's analysis of how the Internet Worm worked | | -------- Feb 1989 First mention of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) | -------- Mar 1989 First discussion of cold fusion | -------- Sep 1989 First mention of AOL | -------- Oct 1989 First post in alt.hypertext | -------- Nov 1989 First post from Berlin after the wall came down | | -------- Jul 1991 The kremvax exists! | -------- Aug 1991 C.E.R.N.'s Announcement of the World Wide Web project | -------- Sep 1991 Announcement of Internet Gopher | -------- Oct 1991 Linus Torvalds' Linux announcement | -------- Dec 1991 First post to alt.religion.kibology by Kibo | | -------- Jan 1992 The famous Linux debate between Andy Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds | -------- May 1992 First Usenet post from an AOL account | -------- Jun 1992 First BOFH post | | -------- Mar 1993 Marc Andreessen's Mosaic announcement | -------- Apr 1993 Gene Spafford's farewell post | | -------- Apr 1994 First mass spamming (Green Card spam) | -------- Jun 1994 Announcement of the WebCrawler launch | -------- Oct 1994 Marc Andreessen's Netscape announcement | -------- Dec 1994 Early mentions of Yahoo! and Lycos before they were companies | | -------- May 1995 First mention of DejaNews | -------- Dec 1995 Announcement of the AltaVista launch | | -------- Mar 1998 First mention of Google | -------- May 1998 First mention of Mac OSX | | -------- Feb 2001 Google acquires Deja archive | ----- 11 Dec 2001 Google offers 20-year Usenet Archive
The offering of the complete archive was made possible with the help of the following people: Jürgen Christoffel [ http://www.port25.com ], Bruce Jones [ http://www.shikan.org/ ], Kent Landfield [ http://www.faqs.org/ ], Henry Spencer [ http://www.google.com/search?q=henry%20spencer ], David Wiseman [ http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi ].
©2001 Google