Google has a new version of Google Groups in beta. It is pretty beta-like still. Lots of test groups and some kinks to work out (among them, danish characters are generally handled incorrectly) but there is one new feature that is truly great: All groups emit atom feeds of recent changes So now we have newsreader feeds for just about everything, and certainly for all of usenet. If you look as an example at the feed overview for comp.lang.perl.misc You'll notice a good effort to maintain the "don't be evil" value. Here it's the slogan "You don't have to come to us". They even recommend common newsreaders that are able consume the Atom feeds. If you dig around you'll also find recommendations for what you do if you would rather have RSS and again its not a Google product plug but a referral to a feed conversion service.