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Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

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Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#91

Post by sebastianavina »

joebadmo wrote: post #52
saurik wrote: post #44

So, in 2005 I was involved in a company that thought "man, it would be great to build a search engine for source code". I even started putting together components for it, such as a model for finding text inside of larger documents that had statistical properties similar to code, auto-detecting the language, so you could find code snippets inside of blog posts. However, by the time we got organized enough to actually…

Which means that both our company, and any other company, that thought it had a sustainable model for running such a project, and at this point would probably be "pretty awesome", never started, and we are all suddenly thrust back into 2005, unable to search for code. I see two viable reactions to this: 1. There's now a vacuum where Code Search was, and, evidently, some demand. Why not startup now? 2. Not even Google…

I think google code was very expensive to run because of the regular expression search feature, which was awesome, but cpu intensive... I'm sure they are killing the project because of feautres like that.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#92

Post by morsch »

joebadmo wrote: post #41
frossie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger lies in being a company with a reputation of launching stuff and then not sticking with them. At some point that starts harming adoption levels of new products. Edit to comment below: "Trying and failing is a far better outcome than never having tried at all" is a great mantra for individuals or even small startups, but I am not sure how it applies here. I am still bitter over Google abandoning Notebook (w…

I would definitely not base any sort of important business function on any free Google beta product without seriously considering the difficulty of migrating upon shutdown of said service. I assume that a major criterion for Google shutting down a service is low usage. For them, that constitutes failure. Very few people were using Notebook, Calendar Search, Wave, or Code Search. I'm sure it's fairly simple to calcula…

> I assume that a major criterion for Google shutting down a service is low usage. For them, that constitutes failure.

I guess the question is, low usage compared to what? Compared to other Google services (search, mail), almost anything will be very low usage.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#94

Post by mongol »

pbreit wrote: post #70
jrockway wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you sell ads on a bunch of code results? That's the only logical explanation I see for shutting this down. I find a globally-searchable database of code useful enough to want to rewrite this myself. I won't get all of the Internet, but if I can get Github and GNU / Apache / etc., it will be enough.

i"ve only thought about it for about 30 seconds but it would seem to be the absolute best place to post engineering job ads.

Also - ads for e-books perhaps. If you end up looking at Hibernate code, you are struggling with Hibernate. Why not clicking on "Hibernate In Action"?

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#95

Post by prbuckley »

saurik wrote: post #63
joebadmo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point. It's a good one, and I sort of agree with you, but I also think it's more complicated than that. For example, it's hard to say whether the six years of code search we got from google was better or worse than what a sustainable startup could have provided. And if was better, how do you measure that against its sudden disappearance until there's some viable replacement (if there will ever be one). It'…

I am not certain if you saw the edit I added to my previous comment (I added it reasonably immediately, but you also responded within 10 minutes, so maybe you missed it), but I believe it addresses some of these points; I will restate, however, more directly targeting this post, just in case. Google doesn't seem to try to make things sustainably, and in this case didn't even try their bread-and-butter business model…

I enjoyed reading your back and forth in this thread. I can see both of your points and don't really know what side of the fence I land on my self but I would like to jump in with one observation you might find poignant.

To carry on with your climate analogy... My economics professor used to talk about "the destructive winds of innovation or invention". I think this might be a perfect example of this. Markets are a messy place where new ideas displace old ones, new models challenge old models and sometime you compete with companies that behave in unsustainable and irrational ways. I think you can wish it wasn't that way but I tend to believe this is a symptom of the human condition. What alternative is there? Surly none of us want the government to regulate what projects companies choose to work on? We are stuck with people self regulating themselves and this always has mixed results.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#96

Post by Uhhrrr »

ch wrote: post #17

Sad to see Code Search go. I just tried a simple search for 'pthread_t' on both Koders ( http://www.koders.com ) and Krugle ( http://opensearch.krugle.org ). Both are mentioned elsewhere in the comments as possible alternatives. Krugle found no results. Koders found results, but the response time was very large. Both have a long way to go in being a viable Code Search replacement. Hopefully Code Search just gets roll…

Double quotes seem to stop it from tokenizing, e.g. "pthread_t".

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#97

Post by [deleted] »

prbuckley wrote: post #95
saurik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not certain if you saw the edit I added to my previous comment (I added it reasonably immediately, but you also responded within 10 minutes, so maybe you missed it), but I believe it addresses some of these points; I will restate, however, more directly targeting this post, just in case. Google doesn't seem to try to make things sustainably, and in this case didn't even try their bread-and-butter business model…

I enjoyed reading your back and forth in this thread. I can see both of your points and don't really know what side of the fence I land on my self but I would like to jump in with one observation you might find poignant. To carry on with your climate analogy... My economics professor used to talk about "the destructive winds of innovation or invention". I think this might be a perfect example of this. Markets are a m…

[deleted]

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#98

Post by sixtofour »

nir wrote: post #88
sixtofour wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can't measure geek cred. You can't measure the second-order effect of services like Code Search." And so as a publicly owned, regulated, billion dollar corporation, it no longer make sense to commit unmeasured resources to support unmeasurable benefits.

The funny thing is that the supposedly mature "we're a public, billion dollar grown up corporation now" approach almost always ends up robbing the company of its ability to lead and innovate. Google is neglecting products it's great at (eg GAE) to focus on areas it's completely clueless about (like Google+). There's no real risk here, the ads are going to continue pumping cash in, but it's slowly becoming a big dumb…

I probably agree with your first paragraph. That might be the inevitable consequence of big, or it might be too tight a focus on explicit shareholder value in the regulations, or ...

Your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs won't surprise me.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#100

Post by dextorious »

ajays wrote: post #48

I may be biased, but: I feel like Google's "geek cred" is slipping. It feels like PMs (and their "monetization strategies") are gaining control over at El Goog, shutting down anything that isn't "revenue positive". You can't measure geek cred. You can't measure the second-order effect of services like Code Search. So the slow slide of Google turning into "just another tech company" starts...

"I may be biased, but: I feel like Google's "geek cred" is slipping."

Thank you, Captain Obvious!

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