I've been using usenet searches since about 1995 to get programming information, mostly for microsoft APIs. First searching via dejanews, and now google "groups" which bought out dejanews. Over the last few years I've noticed a steady decline in the quantity of search results for usenet from google, and today I find I'm completely unable to get a working usenet search on their advanced group search page. I'm used to searching on "microsoft.*" sometimes suplemented with "microsoft" or "microsoft*". Just try to find a post from 1996-1998 time period on "database" in either the comp.* or microsoft.* hierarchies, and if you can do it, please show your search expression. There should be thousands of results.
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?safe=off&q=database+group%3Amicrosoft*&btnG=Rechercher&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1996&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1999&as_drrb=b&sitesearch=
seems to work nicely... 994 results (no thousands but still...)