# Usenet On Google

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usenet-on-google/117679>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 6, 2002, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usenet-on-google/117679 "2002-07-06T21:55:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2002, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usenet-on-google/117679/1 "2002-07-06T21:55:54Z")

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When posting to Newgroups on **Google** , I understood that in their Beta stage, posts would take 8-9 hours to show up, but now that they are **out** of Beta, it **still** takes that long.

Will this ever change or did I misunderstand from the beginning?

Thanks

Quasi

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**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2002, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usenet-on-google/117679/2 "2002-07-06T22:47:41Z")

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On the help page, they say this:

> [@](#):
>
> How often is the newsgroup archive updated?  
> The archive is currently updated several times per day. There may be a delay of up to 12 hours between articles being posted to a news server and those articles being searchable within Google’s newsgroup search. We realize this is less than ideal, and we hope to increase the frequency of updates in the near future.

Source: [http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html#updated](http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html#updated)

Seems pretty vague to me.

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**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2002, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usenet-on-google/117679/3 "2002-07-06T23:15:03Z")

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I think Usenet has always been like that.

Unlike a message board where messages are stored in one place, or IRC where messages are transmitted from one server to another instantly, Usenet is made up of hundreds of servers that update slowly. Your ISP’s news server might only update from its uplink once every hour, or every day. In turn, that uplink server might only update from its uplinks once every hour or every day, and so on.

Instantaneous updates would be impractical because there are thousands of newsgroups with hundreds of thousands of posts per day.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2002, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usenet-on-google/117679/4 "2002-07-06T23:48:46Z")

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I dunno about that. When I post to a newsgroup and refresh the post lists using Hogwasher (dedicated newsgroup reader sw), the post I just made always shows up in the post list.

But I’m not sure why you’d expect Google’s HTML version to keep pace with it. It’s a mirrored archive for all practical purposes.