Google has big plans for Groups service

Online discussion forums date from the Internet's early days and are seen by many as passe in this Web 2.0 era of blogs, wikis and social networks, but Google Inc. has no plan to put its Groups service out to pasture.

On the contrary, Google gave Groups a facelift on Wednesday. The discussion forum got a redesigned interface and new features like the ability to create and edit Web pages and upload and share files. And this is just the beginning of the service's makeover, according to Andrew Zaeske, Groups' engineering manager.

In an interview with IDG News Service, Zaeske explained that Google sees Groups as a great vehicle not only for discussion but also for collaboration and for generating content. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

IDGNS: Google launched Groups about 6 years ago, after acquiring Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, whose archive of forums and messages dated back to 1995. Today people have other newer services to interact online, like social networks, blogs, wikis and virtual worlds. Aren't discussion forums a bit dated?

Zaeske: With Groups we're going well beyond normal discussion forums by adding the ability to do all these great things like creating Web pages and the appearance for your group. We're trying to complement discussions with a lot of the great things going on on the Web right now that make it really exciting for people to collaborate. Blogs are mostly about self expression and social networks are largely about having fun. Wikis are about gathering knowledge. We see the new version of Groups as wikis for the masses with discussions woven in.

IDGNS: Still, as these newer Web 2.0 services continue to expand and improve, won't discussion forums become obsolete in the near future?

Zaeske: Discussions in general are a feature that is useful for a number of reasons and that will never become obsolete and will be part of all of these services [like wikis, social networks and blogs]. Discussions are a source of publicly searchable information, particularly of user expertise in certain areas, but it's also very convenient to get into discussions.

We think adding Web page creation and the ability to change the appearance of your forum will cause Groups to be perceived as more than just a discussion forum product. Our goal is to let people do all sorts of creative things and talk about them in Groups. I'd say that Groups is more about groupware going forward and less specifically about discussions. It offers a great discussion service but with the new features it's a lot about collaboration and expression and content creation.

IDGNS: Do you foresee integrating other functionality into Groups, like blogging?

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