I miss dejanews - anyone remember that before Google bought them? They had full search, it's a shame Google let that go. Their search went back to pretty much the beginning of net news. Does that exist anywhere anymore?
Don't be too hard on Google's acquisition of Deja. I wasn't working at Google at the time, but heard from many colleagues when I joined that the Deja acquisition was quite chaotic because Deja was just about to shut down entirely when Google picked it up rather than let it disappear. It's a shame they don't do better with the Usenet archive now, but it's clearly not Google's business anymore.
I remember being super bummed when bitrot set in. Posts I knew existed just couldn't be found.
As someone who got their first car running by way of Usenet archives (a 69 Beetle), I always loved how well it was archived compared to all the web bulletin boards that fragment so much information as they quickly rot year after year.