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I noticed recently that the Internet Usenet Search is now displaying "Subscribers Only" under the group name instead of listing the group name itself. I used the group name to load the specific group and didn't use the search to instantly queue any downloads. Did you recently change this? If so, why? It is now quite slow and painful for NB to do a local search through millions of posts.

Yes, we changed it. Along with identifying (or filtering spam) and identifying (or filtering) encrypted files, the new search engine blocks the group names if you're not a subscriber.

Not cool at all. In your earlier announcement, you mentioned nothing of blocking the group name. This "enhancement" was nothing more than to increase subscriptions to your search engine. I used NB specifically because it had this feature baked in...and not to use another free service that is out there. I can understand using the search engine to quickly and easily queue downloads, but to now block what groups those posts belong in is a downgrade of your product.

Our Usenet Search service has always been advertised as an optional service. We decided to allow searches to work for non-subscribers so people could see what our search engine would return so they could evaluate whether to get a subscription or not. The fact that you were using our search for free then using the group name to know which group to download headers from means you were circumventing our intent.

Oingofan wrote: This "enhancement" was nothing more than to increase subscriptions to your search engine.

We spent months working on this new database. The change to block the group name for non-subscribers was a few lines of code and took me 5 minutes. The enhancements are to give subscribers better data and based on the feedback we have receive so far, it is doing that other than a few small bugs we are still ironing out.

Subscriptions start at $2.50 per month. If you subscribe you can queue those search results for download right from the search list instead of taking the extra steps you are currently taking.