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Google hates anything that requires a human's touch, and per the article: > Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse managemen

by k3n 12y ago

Google hates anything that requires a human's touch, and per the article: > Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management. They see Google Code as a time-sink, and they're probably right, and it's not surprising to me that they'd drop something that is no longer serving it's intended purpose, but instead has negative implications for their model. Keeping it going forward would require even more hands-on humans, so they scrap it. As for the deep links, one of the Google Code devs did mention[1]: > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. His comment also contains a link to a wiki with more information on how to opt-in to this service. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html?showComment=1426178913316#c6979343460978972701 http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-go...

aikah 12y ago
> I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that will be lost no question.Open source code is a community wealth,even in funky languages nobody use anymore. What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil".
- magicalist 12y ago
  I seriously doubt Github would ever agree to that automation. First, what accounts would all these orphan repos go under? Second, how much spam would they be agreeing to host by saying yes to that? This is a much better job for The Internet Archive or a read-only google code in perpetuity. edit: in fact, it looks like they're planning on making a read-only version, but the definition of "legitimate" is going to be very important to nail down: > cdibona: We are planing on taking the majority of these legitimate, open source, 'abandonded' projects and putting them up in cold storage in a git repo on googlesource.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554
- enjo 12y ago
  On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? I get it, we all hate Google on HN (for reasons unclear to me) but this is ridiculous. If these projects are truly important than donate some time and move them over yourself. To demand that google invest time and resources into the migration of these migrations or to keeping this running forever is just silly. Hell tools like https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ even exist.
  - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
    In actuality, I've found most HN users seem to love Google. To the extent that almost any criticism of Google gets downvoted to death.
    - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
      Case in point, this comment just dropped three points. ;)
      - markcerqueira 12y ago
        Don't sweat it. Don't let imaginary internet points make you feel bad... or good.
  - jayvanguard 12y ago
    > On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? The current planet? Open source projects have a lifetime of years so five months is not that long in the scheme of things. People put there code on there and participated (providing Google content that they were able to use and drive traffic) with the expectation that it would be there for the long term.
    - oldmanjay 12y ago
      This is a rather watery definition of evil. It is fairly close to saying a restaurant is evil for not keeping a menu item you like.
- zanny 12y ago
  > that will be lost no question We have over a year. There will be backups of all of google code made, and even then the Internet Archive will certainly have a backup of all the software projects on it. I doubt any code will be lost - active participation might be, from developers who don't want to relearn how to do things on github.
- scott_s 12y ago
  A sibling comment already pointed this out, but the existence of https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ and its explicit mention in the post along with the clear language that they did work with GitHub and Bitbucket, leads me to believe that you did not read the post.
- tcheard 12y ago
  > What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil". Oh come on! I'm not a fan of everything Google does, and I can see, and in part agree with, the point you are trying to make, but this is just grasping at straws. You just lost all credibility with this comment. Yes, I can see unmaintained code being lost here, and that is unfortunate. But Google provided this service for free, a service they started to promote open source software development. They noticed that there was a big move to other hosting platforms, that they themselves also believe are better than theirs. This has led to support for this platform to be little more than dealing with abuse cases, and they feel that the benefit to the community no longer outweighs the cost of the platform. They have gone out of their way to provide ways to migrate code from Google Code to these other "better" platforms, and they are giving people over 18 months to migrate their code: > January 25, 2016 - The project hosting service is closed. You will be able to download a tarball of project source, issues, and wikis. These tarballs will be available throughout the rest of 2016. They really didn't have to provide any of this. None of this is "evil". There are plenty of acts that Google do that border on "evil", but this is really just the wrong one to choose to call them out on. What do you really expect them to do here?
shmerl 12y ago
> Google hates anything that requires a human's touch I guess robots will soon make decisions in Google too ;)
bigiain 12y ago
"Google hates anything that requires a human's touch" Perhaps they should stop offering products to humans then? Seriously, why would _anybody_ use/recommend a Google product, when the expectation of "customer service" is "maybe some other poor schmuk on some poorly maintained and difficult to search Google group once had the same problem and they (or some other non Google person) worked out a fix and bothered posting it". Yeah, you're not paying for it - it's worth exactly that when anything goes wrong. (Unless you're running 5 or 6 digits a month in Adwords spend, then they're _remarkably_ good at CS...)
chernevik 12y ago
But the parent comment gave a very plausible suggestion for how Google can do this in a very low maintenance way. Yes, there is abuse management, but now that they're read-only I'd expect this to fall off pretty fast. Google's first business is access to information about links. You'd think they would be more careful about propagating link rot. Unless they _want_ link rot, as they're much better positioned to handle changes in links than any search engine entrant?
- userbinator 12y ago
  Unless they _want_ link rot, as they're much better positioned to handle changes in links than any search engine entrant? That does make sense - the more people who stumble upon broken links an choose to use them to find information, the more traffic they get and can earn from ads with. Remember their experiments with Chrome hiding the URL(!) last year?

by k3n 12y ago

aikah 12y ago

> I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that will be lost no question.Open source code is a community wealth,even in funky languages nobody use anymore. What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil".

magicalist 12y ago
I seriously doubt Github would ever agree to that automation. First, what accounts would all these orphan repos go under? Second, how much spam would they be agreeing to host by saying yes to that? This is a much better job for The Internet Archive or a read-only google code in perpetuity. edit: in fact, it looks like they're planning on making a read-only version, but the definition of "legitimate" is going to be very important to nail down: > cdibona: We are planing on taking the majority of these legitimate, open source, 'abandonded' projects and putting them up in cold storage in a git repo on googlesource.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192554
enjo 12y ago
On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? I get it, we all hate Google on HN (for reasons unclear to me) but this is ridiculous. If these projects are truly important than donate some time and move them over yourself. To demand that google invest time and resources into the migration of these migrations or to keeping this running forever is just silly. Hell tools like https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ even exist.
- ocdtrekkie 12y ago
  In actuality, I've found most HN users seem to love Google. To the extent that almost any criticism of Google gets downvoted to death.
  - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
    Case in point, this comment just dropped three points. ;)
    - markcerqueira 12y ago
      Don't sweat it. Don't let imaginary internet points make you feel bad... or good.
- jayvanguard 12y ago
  > On what planet is shutting down a service, with months and months of notice, evil? The current planet? Open source projects have a lifetime of years so five months is not that long in the scheme of things. People put there code on there and participated (providing Google content that they were able to use and drive traffic) with the expectation that it would be there for the long term.
  - oldmanjay 12y ago
    This is a rather watery definition of evil. It is fairly close to saying a restaurant is evil for not keeping a menu item you like.
zanny 12y ago
> that will be lost no question We have over a year. There will be backups of all of google code made, and even then the Internet Archive will certainly have a backup of all the software projects on it. I doubt any code will be lost - active participation might be, from developers who don't want to relearn how to do things on github.
scott_s 12y ago
A sibling comment already pointed this out, but the existence of https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ and its explicit mention in the post along with the clear language that they did work with GitHub and Bitbucket, leads me to believe that you did not read the post.
tcheard 12y ago
> What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil". Oh come on! I'm not a fan of everything Google does, and I can see, and in part agree with, the point you are trying to make, but this is just grasping at straws. You just lost all credibility with this comment. Yes, I can see unmaintained code being lost here, and that is unfortunate. But Google provided this service for free, a service they started to promote open source software development. They noticed that there was a big move to other hosting platforms, that they themselves also believe are better than theirs. This has led to support for this platform to be little more than dealing with abuse cases, and they feel that the benefit to the community no longer outweighs the cost of the platform. They have gone out of their way to provide ways to migrate code from Google Code to these other "better" platforms, and they are giving people over 18 months to migrate their code: > January 25, 2016 - The project hosting service is closed. You will be able to download a tarball of project source, issues, and wikis. These tarballs will be available throughout the rest of 2016. They really didn't have to provide any of this. None of this is "evil". There are plenty of acts that Google do that border on "evil", but this is really just the wrong one to choose to call them out on. What do you really expect them to do here?

shmerl 12y ago

> Google hates anything that requires a human's touch I guess robots will soon make decisions in Google too ;)

bigiain 12y ago

"Google hates anything that requires a human's touch" Perhaps they should stop offering products to humans then? Seriously, why would _anybody_ use/recommend a Google product, when the expectation of "customer service" is "maybe some other poor schmuk on some poorly maintained and difficult to search Google group once had the same problem and they (or some other non Google person) worked out a fix and bothered posting it". Yeah, you're not paying for it - it's worth exactly that when anything goes wrong. (Unless you're running 5 or 6 digits a month in Adwords spend, then they're _remarkably_ good at CS...)

chernevik 12y ago

But the parent comment gave a very plausible suggestion for how Google can do this in a very low maintenance way. Yes, there is abuse management, but now that they're read-only I'd expect this to fall off pretty fast. Google's first business is access to information about links. You'd think they would be more careful about propagating link rot. Unless they _want_ link rot, as they're much better positioned to handle changes in links than any search engine entrant?

userbinator 12y ago
Unless they _want_ link rot, as they're much better positioned to handle changes in links than any search engine entrant? That does make sense - the more people who stumble upon broken links an choose to use them to find information, the more traffic they get and can earn from ads with. Remember their experiments with Chrome hiding the URL(!) last year?