To the delight (and possible consternation) of old-school Usenet fans, Web search site Google has restored more than 650 million individual messages dating back to 1995 that were acquired from New York-based Deja.com.

A huge part of the archives, which date back to March 1995, was not originally placed on Google's site following the acquisition earlier this year, prompting outrage among fans of the discussion service.

Through an advanced search page on its site, Google has decided to restore the complete archives to allow users to search for old message board discussions using a new set of parameters.

"This archive is the largest such storehouse of postings on the Web and contains more than 650 million individual messages. Much of this information has been unavailable for years and constitutes the largest collection of searchable Usenet data on the Internet," Google said.

The company said users would be able to limit searches by a number of parameters, including date range, language, message ID, author, subject, or newsgroup.

The Mountain View, CA-based Google, which offers a targeted search engine that indexes and ranks Web sites according to the number of links leading to that site, plans to develop software to allow Usenet posters to send messages to specific newsgroups. The update is slated for launch in the middle of May.

While Usenet fans publicly called for the archived messages to be available following the Google acquisition, some original users worry that the availability of a specific search feature could return private and personal information.

Before message boards and public forums became a normal part of the Internet, Deja's Usenet discussion service was a popular forum for discussion. Those posts, however, were not archived or searchable.

Back then, the majority of posters used real names and e-mail addresses but now that Google has optimized the search feature, every post ever made can now be found.

There are some old-schoolers cringing today.