Yahoo! versus Google

I have a Yahoo Group where in a main page description about outages of
> hot water heaters I mentioned plug-in heaters to put in pails as are > used in a barnyard. "Barnyard" caused a rejection of my Yahoo Group > main page update.

It's really a sad commentary on society when a word like that first conjures up bizarre carnal images involving farm animals.

Trying to mention the TV show "Sex in the City" caused same problem. > I anxiously await Google Groups to be able to replace Yahoo Groups > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So the Yahoo people have all become > idiots in recent years ... so what else is old news? The real problem > is the amount of spam and the spam-enablers who keep insisting that > filters are the solution. PAT]

I'm about to hang it up with Yahoo! I have a primary account I've had for over ten years. I really only use it for Yahoo Messenger. They charge for POP and SMTP for their email, a service that isn't all that great. I log in periodically to empty out all of the spam that enters my inbox instead of my junk folder.

I had a secondary account which was terminated last week for violating their Terms of Service. No further explanation. I used my real identity and location. I was not conducting illegal activities. I wasn't swapping "adult" material. The best I figure is I said something like "my ShopVac sucked all of the gunk out of the ditch..." and their moral-bot spotted that 3rd word.

I much prefer Google Groups to Yahoo Groups. Aesthetics aside, here are the two things I don't like about Yahoo Groups.

I like to keep private messages private and public messages public. I see a lot of value in having a service like Google Groups with publicly searchable archives for USENET and Google Groups. The problem I've seen with Yahoo is once a group goes defunct, even one that was private, suddenly shows up in search engines. I would say things in private forums that I wouldn't normally say. When I started out as a Scout leader, Googling my name brought up lots of hits full of off-color remarks. For this reason I started using the X-No-Archive flag in ALL of my messages to help prevent this. I would rather nothing show up than private messages.
However, given how powerful Google is, I have removed the X-No-Archive flag. I'm just a lot more careful about what I post. I assume even private person-to-person emails will someday be indexed. Google hosts my domain which means I use GMail for my personal email. The spam filter is so good I don't mind using this address on USENET.

Yes, point 2 seems to contradict point 1. Instead of fearing if the next thing I type will embarrass me five years later, I just let everything be indexed.

John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA