If you are a Google Groups owner or user, here is a sad news for you. Google has decided to remove its support for pages and files in Google Groups from 2011 start. This means you will no longer be able to share or add files to the group or make information pages within.
Google announced that from January 2011, they will remove the editing or creating files or pages feature, but the files will be there. From February 2011 the whole feature will be removed completely and no content will be available. Google’s statement for this change is to keep the standards of forum discussion and mailing lists.
Google in an email to Group owners notified that:
“Starting in January 2011, Groups will no longer allow the creation or editing of welcome messages, files and pages; the content will only be available for viewing and only existing files will be downloadable. If you would like to keep the content currently on the pages and files sections of your group, we highly encourage you to export and migrate it to another product. In February 2011, we will turn off these features, and you will no longer be able to access that content.”
Google suggests that the people interested in using the pages for welcome or starter purpose, should try Google Sites instead. There will be some integration made between Groups and Sites services. There seems no highlighted reason why Google has taken this step to remove two most demanded features of Google Groups but bringing Google Sites in here means something must be cooking.