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Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

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Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#101

Post by dextorious »

alain94040 wrote: post #89
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…

If anyone can come up with a law that basically forces companies who give up on free products to open source the code they no longer use, that would lead to amazing opportunities!

It's not just the code --which might as well be useless.

You also need serious $$$ in infrastructure to run it for the web masses.

This is getting to be a problem for FOSS. I mean, once you could get some universities, volunteers, etc, donate some hosting for repository mirrors and stuff, and it was enough.

Nowadays, a service that caters to the web crowds needs serious many to run with some capacity (and redundancy). So, say, GNU cannot just start a FOSS Gmail, or a FOSS Github service running on free servers and controlled by the community. Also see: Diaspora.

So, FOSS is mostly confined to the desktop or as server backend infrastructure, but cannot compete as SaaS.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#102

Post by dextorious »

saurik wrote: post #83
kmt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that when price of zero is bad in sense that it raises the users expectations to infinity (if you think of value/price) and this is bad for the echo system. On the other hand "free" allows everyone in the world with Internet access to use the service which is a very positive thing overal. IMO, the best model (in terms of impact, not in terms of business model necessarily) is a hybrid where you offer premium s…

I actually agree with the point of your comment: GitHub, to take one of your examples, seems to be a profitable business model. My reaction in this context, however, is that I do not feel like Google is trying to figure out a business model of any kind for most of its products. To try to draw the difference, in the case of where Google offers free things, it seems to not have any relation at all to the things where i…

> In the case of GitHub, their pricing for people who want private repositories is brutal

Well, I wouldn't call $7 (5 private repos, 1 private, oo public collaborators) to $20 a month (10 private repos, oo private collaborators, oo private collaborators) "brutal".

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#103

Post by sx »

At Pattern Insight (http://patterninsight.com) we have build a source code search engine. We do not give this to our customers as a standalone tool most of the time but it's the underlying technology for our product, Code Assurance, which helps companies eliminate bugs from their releases.

We use it internally to search our code / libraries, if anyone is interested in indexing/searching his own code, especially if it's open source, I would be happy to provide a copy. Email: spiros at patterninsight.com

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#104

Post by uriel »

jsnell wrote: post #50
anon1385 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

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 ac…

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.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#105

Post by uriel »

reinhardt wrote: post #66
daliusd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I have found out that google search "function/class/variable/anything else filetype:extension" works even better than google code search.

I don't know how well does code search work for searching punctuation but I'm sure general web search doesn't cut it.

Code Search allows using regexps for searching, which is one of the things that made it super awesome.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#106

Post by dennisgorelik »

mturmon wrote: post #90
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…

Reminds me of this story. Substitute Apple for Google and Panic for you: http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ Excerpts: We [at Panic] also seem to remember that Jobs painted us a vibrant (but genuinely honest) picture of how he viewed Audion [our product] fairing against iTunes: "It's like you guys are a little push-cart going down the railroad tracks, and we're a giant steam engine about to run you down." *** I…

Thanks for the link. Very educational. I see it was discussed on HN long time ago.

However Audion story is quite different from Google Buzz / Code Search story. Apple didn't kill iTunes. Audion would have died anyway, because they didn't find free business model for their MP3 player.

Audion story is educational in terms of missing key business opportunities.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#107

Post by wavephorm »

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…

Google is like a big oil company that can afford to build a gas station right beside the mom & pop station, and undercut them until they go out of business.

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#108

Post by saurik »

dextorious wrote: post #102
saurik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree with the point of your comment: GitHub, to take one of your examples, seems to be a profitable business model. My reaction in this context, however, is that I do not feel like Google is trying to figure out a business model of any kind for most of its products. To try to draw the difference, in the case of where Google offers free things, it seems to not have any relation at all to the things where i…

> In the case of GitHub, their pricing for people who want private repositories is brutal Well, I wouldn't call $7 (5 private repos, 1 private, oo public collaborators) to $20 a month (10 private repos, oo private collaborators, oo private collaborators) "brutal".

I used it as an example as I know HN users complain about it quite often: here are some references. Call it what you will, but a lot of people seem to disagree with per-repository pricing for small low-usage repositories, just because they are private.

If Dropbox Used GitHub’s Pricing Plan -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2780955

Bitbucket now rocks Git -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3066828

"Yeah, it's ridiculous. I have enough repos that I'd need the Platinum 200 dollar a month plan." -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3023826

"For Git projects, the per-repo pricing of Github is insane. They don't even have a public pricing plan for the number of repos I'd need for my personal (and private) coding." -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740757

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#109

Post by BrandonM »

Louis CK (you might know him from the popular "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy" video) frequently appears on Opie & Anthony. He makes a similar point regarding chains driving out local stores then closing up shop in this show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N95IMKRkcBw

Re: Google Killing Off Buzz and Code Search

#110

Post by madmath »

I could see a product similar to code search being integrated into services like github and others. Code search wasn't perfect, it basically just searched code. What if you had a product that could, like an IDE, follow method declarations and the like? That'd be cool.
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