Google Groups is a service of Google that enables group communication. Google Groups started life as a searchable archive of Usenet postings going back to 1981.

Google has updated Groups to allow users to create their own groups and have the group hosted by Google. Users can post via Email or via Groups web site. Many organizations use the Google Groups service to host forums and all kinds of topics from software to baseball and anywhere in between.

Google Groups is a free service. It is sponsored by Google’s Contextual Ads so users will see targeted adds within the groups.

Google has recently added a ratings feature that allows the posts to be rated by the users in the group.