It occurs to me that the reasoning for this change to the new Google Groups format, and how it impacts replying "privately" to an author (I miss this feature) is that Google wants to make all of their groups operate the same from a permissions standpoint.

Because USENET news groups effectively have no per user, or per group, permissions, anyone can say anything to anyone (witness our least favorite RAS denizen Daryl S. Kabatoff). Basically there is no owner, or manager, of the RAS Google group so there is no one in control. Thus a reader of USENET news via Google Groups doesn't have the correct "permissions" to reply privately.

Google doesn't want to support a unique interface for a small group of users. Understandable from their point of view but I don't like it...

My $0.02.

- John (OHM)