4 ms·

Did they give a reason for shutting down code search? I didn't see it but think it deserves some kind of explanation of the decision.

by zackb 15y ago

anon1385 15y ago
It costs money. The kind of people who use it probably have adblock installed. It's not surprising that they would cancel it, they are a company driven by profit after all. I don't think there is really much to explain. Maybe once it had utility as a way to earn good will among developers, but presumably they don't care too much about that these days, given how little competition and how much brand recognition they have. (Is Steve Yegge is still wondering about that 'arrogance' thing?). Every time you perform a normal Google search be thankful for all the people who browse the internet without adblock: they are subsidising you.
- jsnell 15y ago
  It might not be simply a matter of money, there are other limited resources. For example there could be trouble staffing the project due to nobody wanting to work on it. Or be unwilling to staff it since they feel that anyone working on it could make a bigger impact elsewhere. (And before anyone starts nitpicking that either of those issues could be solved by just throwing more money at it, money and people aren't actually infinitely fungible).
  - uriel 15y ago
    Interesting note: As far as I know Code Search was built mostly by Russ Cox, he is now one of the main developers of the Go language.
- dxbydt 15y ago
  >>It costs money. Then slap a Gogle Payments icon on the page and charge a dime per click. Or a nickel. They can make a pretty penny, no pun intended :)
  - pdonis 15y ago
    As someone who routinely uses Google with AdBlock installed, I second this. For that matter, I would gladly pay Google a monthly fee to have unlimited search, if the "free" Google only had limited search. The fact that Google has chosen to make their money from advertisers instead of users like me is not my fault.
    - rrrazdan 15y ago
      Yes its not your fault, but it's also not Google's fault. Your sense of entitlement is very surprising.
      - Robin_Message 15y ago
        It's not "entitlement" to ask to pay for something.
- azakai 15y ago
  > It costs money. The kind of people who use it probably have adblock installed. It's not surprising that they would cancel it, they are a company driven by profit after all. I don't think there is really much to explain. Maybe once it had utility as a way to earn good will among developers, but presumably they don't care too much about that these days, given how little competition and how much brand recognition they have. (Is Steve Yegge is still wondering about that 'arrogance' thing?). It does cost money, but I kind of doubt this is the reason. First thing, I assume that Google will continue to have Code Search or something very much like it available internally. The reason is simple: Like many people here said, this kind of search is useful for us programmers. So Google would be silly to not let its people continue to benefit from it. Google is known to have lots of internal tools written to make its developers more productive - this would be just another one. Second, given that assumption, I wonder how much money it takes to run Code Search publicly. The code is already working, development costs are already paid. How much traffic does it actually receive? I doubt it is that much that it is significant in any way for Google. Google's server infrastructure is very efficient, and the amount of people searching for code isn't that big in absolute terms. So why would Google be shutting it down? I have no idea. I can throw out a few wild guesses, but don't take them too seriously: 1. Part of a push to limit the amount of Google websites and services - just to keep the number smaller, more coherent, more cohesive. 2. Keeping Code Search an internal tool gives Google another advantage that its developers have that others do not. 2.1. Perhaps Google just finished a major upgrade to Code Search, and decided it wants to keep that internal, and doesn't want to maintain two codebases. 3. Fear of potential legal issues, either 3.1. People suing on the assumption that code appearing in Code Search has been 'scanned' by Google, so Google can't say it never saw that code before, say, in a copyright infringement lawsuit (like the Oracle-Google lawsuit), or 3.2. People using Code Search to find similar pieces of code and using that to sue people. (Both of these legal fears seem ridiculous to me, but lawyers tell their clients to do lots of things that seem ridiculous in order to limit legal liability.) Again, though, I really have no idea. But I doubt it is money.

Did they give a reason for shutting down code search? I didn't see it but think it deserves some kind of explanation of the decision.

by zackb 15y ago

Did they give a reason for shutting down code search? I didn't see it but think it deserves some kind of explanation of the decision.

anon1385 15y ago

It costs money. The kind of people who use it probably have adblock installed. It's not surprising that they would cancel it, they are a company driven by profit after all. I don't think there is really much to explain. Maybe once it had utility as a way to earn good will among developers, but presumably they don't care too much about that these days, given how little competition and how much brand recognition they have. (Is Steve Yegge is still wondering about that 'arrogance' thing?). Every time you perform a normal Google search be thankful for all the people who browse the internet without adblock: they are subsidising you.

jsnell 15y ago
It might not be simply a matter of money, there are other limited resources. For example there could be trouble staffing the project due to nobody wanting to work on it. Or be unwilling to staff it since they feel that anyone working on it could make a bigger impact elsewhere. (And before anyone starts nitpicking that either of those issues could be solved by just throwing more money at it, money and people aren't actually infinitely fungible).
- uriel 15y ago
  Interesting note: As far as I know Code Search was built mostly by Russ Cox, he is now one of the main developers of the Go language.
dxbydt 15y ago
>>It costs money. Then slap a Gogle Payments icon on the page and charge a dime per click. Or a nickel. They can make a pretty penny, no pun intended :)
- pdonis 15y ago
  As someone who routinely uses Google with AdBlock installed, I second this. For that matter, I would gladly pay Google a monthly fee to have unlimited search, if the "free" Google only had limited search. The fact that Google has chosen to make their money from advertisers instead of users like me is not my fault.
  - rrrazdan 15y ago
    Yes its not your fault, but it's also not Google's fault. Your sense of entitlement is very surprising.
    - Robin_Message 15y ago
      It's not "entitlement" to ask to pay for something.
azakai 15y ago
> It costs money. The kind of people who use it probably have adblock installed. It's not surprising that they would cancel it, they are a company driven by profit after all. I don't think there is really much to explain. Maybe once it had utility as a way to earn good will among developers, but presumably they don't care too much about that these days, given how little competition and how much brand recognition they have. (Is Steve Yegge is still wondering about that 'arrogance' thing?). It does cost money, but I kind of doubt this is the reason. First thing, I assume that Google will continue to have Code Search or something very much like it available internally. The reason is simple: Like many people here said, this kind of search is useful for us programmers. So Google would be silly to not let its people continue to benefit from it. Google is known to have lots of internal tools written to make its developers more productive - this would be just another one. Second, given that assumption, I wonder how much money it takes to run Code Search publicly. The code is already working, development costs are already paid. How much traffic does it actually receive? I doubt it is that much that it is significant in any way for Google. Google's server infrastructure is very efficient, and the amount of people searching for code isn't that big in absolute terms. So why would Google be shutting it down? I have no idea. I can throw out a few wild guesses, but don't take them too seriously: 1. Part of a push to limit the amount of Google websites and services - just to keep the number smaller, more coherent, more cohesive. 2. Keeping Code Search an internal tool gives Google another advantage that its developers have that others do not. 2.1. Perhaps Google just finished a major upgrade to Code Search, and decided it wants to keep that internal, and doesn't want to maintain two codebases. 3. Fear of potential legal issues, either 3.1. People suing on the assumption that code appearing in Code Search has been 'scanned' by Google, so Google can't say it never saw that code before, say, in a copyright infringement lawsuit (like the Oracle-Google lawsuit), or 3.2. People using Code Search to find similar pieces of code and using that to sue people. (Both of these legal fears seem ridiculous to me, but lawyers tell their clients to do lots of things that seem ridiculous in order to limit legal liability.) Again, though, I really have no idea. But I doubt it is money.