Google Groups up on Yahoo!

Taking on Yahoo! in yet another field, Google is testing a service that lets people create email discussion groups.

Called Google Groups 2, the service lets people create, search and sift through email mailing lists. People can also subscribe to and monitor groups of interest. The search engine, which is preparing for a $2.7bn IPO, introduced a test version of the service on its website on Wednesday.

The company said: "Google Groups 2 enables users to participate in global conversations about any topic."

Google's service will compete directly with Yahoo! Groups, a cornerstone of Yahoo's web community services. That front is only the latest in an ongoing competition between the two internet companies.

In the past five-and-a-half years, Google has morphed from a straightforward web search engine into a network of internet services, many of which rival Yahoo!'s.

Now Google wants to improve discussion groups. Google built Groups 2 from its first groups service, which lets people create and search archives of web-based discussion groups. Google Groups was introduced in 2001 after the company purchased the Usenet archives from Deja News.

Stefanie Olsen writes for News.com