Why isn't anyone talking about Google's spam problem?

Nowhere is this worse than Google Groups.

Once the best source of timely technical information from USENET, Google Groups is now completely polluted by spammers. The situation was radically worsened by Google's misstep in allowing user to create "Google Groups" (user-defined non-USENET sites which are searched by the Google Groups service), Spammers have used Google Groups to create tens of thousands of spam groups and links. Google pays for support of the spam and the user gets buried in it.

Google could, at the very least, partition Google Groups into USENET and "Google Groups" per se. Or they could provide a separate search option for USENET only.

Is there any internal Google discussion of these problems? I have been unable to find any evidence of interest, yet it is unbelievable that Google is unaware.