Google Inc. took over Deja.com's Usenet discussion service Monday, 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.
The deal is a coup for Mountain View-based Google, a rising Web star, and spells the end for New York-based Deja, an online search pioneer that never found a way to make money from its popular service.
In 1995, Deja -- originally known as Dejanews -- created a quick and easy way to read and post messages on Usenet, an online forum that doesn't use the same computer code that powers the World Wide Web.
While opening up Usenet's discussion boards to Web browsers, Deja also created an archive of all the messages posted in the newsgroups. Deja's technology allowed 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.
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.<
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