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Tech historians will cheer the news that Google has unveiled the most comprehensive collection of Usenet posts available on the Internet. The search giant, which bought DejaNews last year, originally yanked the bulk of the company’s backlog of Usenet archives off the Net.

The reason, company officials say, was to update the search technology and create a more functional means of sifting through 20 years’ worth of discussions, with 700 million postings from more than 35,000 topical categories dating to May 1981.

Available at www.google.com /grphp?hl=, there’s the first mention of an IBM PC (in 1981), the introduction of the compact disc (1982) and even early debates over the effectiveness--and $10,000 price tag--of Apple Computer Co.’s ill-fated Lisa machine (also in 1982).