Apparently the Google Groups footer problem is quite recent, with the
earliest report of the problem I can find being on 19th March:

http://groups.google.com/group/is-something-broken/browse_thread/thread/e0622c9032eed02e

It seems that it was introduced to comply with some FCC regulations:

http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/google-groups-complies-with-can-spam-fcc-policy.html

But there's no word yet on why the email address in the new mandatory
footer links to a site which didn't even exist. Of course somebody
registered it now:

http://unsubscribegooglegroups.com/

They're probably getting quite a bit of traffic. Somebody said that if
you include the unsubscribe link yourself in a custom footer then the
new unsubscribe text won't be added to it, but everybody else is
refuting that.

Meanwhile I've also used Feedburner to try to prettify the Blogger
output further. I'm not sure if it's going to be any good; this post
is the test. Also it seems a bit peculiar that I can use the Blogger
input for the Feedburner feed, but then Blogger says that it should
redirect to the Feedburner feed and asks for its address. So in that
case, where is Feedburner getting its source from? Noah Slater says
that the Blogger feed still exists, but all the interface changes to
point to the new Feedburner feed, so that Feedburner are the only ones
requesting the old feed. In that case I could link to my own redirect
for it, but I suppose that's moot anyway since I'm now meta refreshing
the Blogger home page to the Google Group.

This is like hopscotch or so, technology style. I could do with the scotch.

“Sometimes email programs append text to the bottom of each sent
message; to make sure this cruft doesn't get posted to your blog, put
#end at the end of your post.”
— http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?answer=41452

I'm going to try putting the “#end” at the end of a line rather than
on its own line. I'm glad they characterise such things as cruft,
because that's definitely one of the words I would use for their
unsubscribe text.

“Sometimes email programs append text to the bottom of each sent
message; to make sure this cruft doesn't get posted to your blog, put

[#]end at the end of your post.”
— http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?answer=41452

I'm going to try putting the “[#]end” at the end of a line rather than

on its own line. I'm glad they characterise such things as

cruft,because that's definitely one of the words I would use for their
unsubscribe text.

Hilariously, the quote wrapped with [#]end on a new line, and of
course Blogger stopped the post right there. At least I know it works
if you put stuff after it. I wonder what happens to links that have
[#]end in them? I suppose for that reason it would have to only be at
the start of a line?