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Bidding farewell to Google Code

google-opensource.blogspot.com

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Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#71

Post by gtaylor »

hackuser wrote: post #52
gtaylor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google just needs to be up front about it (and maybe they are) Nobody launches a new product and guarantees "If this doesn't work out, we'll keep it around indefinitely on life support". You don't start a new effort expecting failure. If it doesn't end up working out, it'll be closed down. Google's failures are just a lot more public than whatever side business many of us may take a stab at. This isn't unique to Go…

In fact, many vendors, especially in the enterprise market and physical goods, stand behind what they sell through their products' lifetimes. As I mentioned elsewhere, IBM supported OS/2, a marketplace failure, for ~16 years. Buy a washer from Sears; even if that model doesn't sell well, they will support yours. Consumer and 'free' software is the exception, and it's a recent exception with rapid release schedules. I…

> Consumer and 'free' software is the exception, and it's a recent exception with rapid release schedules. It's just shifting the costs from the vendor (maintaining old products) to the consumer (changing/upgrading).

It's important to note that in many cases, the vendor pays for what is otherwise a free service (Reader, Wave, G+). In the case of some services, they may gather some data from which they can profit from, but that doesn't always pay the bills.

So yes, the customer may have to switch services or upgrade, but unlike enterprise software, they aren't paying four to six figures to use said services.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#72

Post by jdmichal »

hackuser wrote: post #44
baggachipz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be feeding here, but the lesson is that you can't count on things Google releases to be around very long. Even APIs for popular products, like Google Maps. Just don't expect anything they release to have a long shelf life. It's annoying and it sucks, and it is now laughable when they tag things with phrases like "free code hosting forever" and so on. For them to change, they'd have to either: 1) Support every…

> Support everything into eternity 'Eternity' overstates it. Plenty of vendors support projects long after they are obsolete. IBM supported OS/2, released 1992 and a marketplace flop, until the end of 2006. That means that if I need something to be around for awhile, I'll count on IBM and not Google. Google has the perogative to make that choice, of course, and long-term support generally is associated more with the…

I think there's a huge difference between continuing support of a product and continuing support of a service. Not the least of which is that products can pick up their own life and unofficial support even after the company has abandoned them. The best you could hope to do for a service is faithfully duplicate it, with all the effort that involves.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#73

Post by serve_yay »

gtaylor wrote: post #5

I'm sure some are going to immediately say "Yet another Google casualty", but I feel like this one probably needed to happen. It's been stagnant for years, and they have been on the mindshare decline since the first two years. I dread having to deal with open source software that is still on Google Code. Admit failure, provide plenty of notice (like they're doing), and close up shop so resources can be spent on more…

Yeah. I don't think anyone is surprised by this, and it's very different from a Google Reader situation. The writing was on the wall when Google projects started moving off of it and onto Github.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#74

Post by DannyBee »

btown wrote: post #54
shubhamjain wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true that no one uses Google Code. Every now and then, I bump into some obscure but a little useful project being hosted on Google Code. Maybe, makers of those projects have grown out of them and don't wish to put any more effort but still, there is a bit of value, I am able to derive from them. What will happen, if those projects are not migrated because their developers have simply forgotten about them?

Someone needs to do an Internet Archive style project on all these repositories, put them up on Github, and make sure that they are indexed properly by search engines (i.e. intro pages become README.md, wikis are migrated, etc.).

If someone wants to make an actual serious effort on this, feel free to contact me.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#75

Post by munificent »

gtaylor wrote: post #5

I'm sure some are going to immediately say "Yet another Google casualty", but I feel like this one probably needed to happen. It's been stagnant for years, and they have been on the mindshare decline since the first two years. I dread having to deal with open source software that is still on Google Code. Admit failure, provide plenty of notice (like they're doing), and close up shop so resources can be spent on more…

How is this even a failure? Google Code was the best at what it did for several years. Now it's not. That doesn't eradicate the time in the past where it provided real value to millions of users.

A party isn't a failure just because everyone eventually has to go home. It just means even successful things have ends.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#76

Post by ocdtrekkie »

baggachipz wrote: post #14
hsgeyfjw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you (google) get away with being such asses? i know a bunch of developers will come to your defense, and say things like it is a free service, but it's not really, because for google, users are the product, and you guys have developed a rep for constantly shutting those users down. switching costs are very real, and people just don't trust you anymore. i don't care about google code in particular, but i hate g…

I might be feeding here, but the lesson is that you can't count on things Google releases to be around very long. Even APIs for popular products, like Google Maps. Just don't expect anything they release to have a long shelf life. It's annoying and it sucks, and it is now laughable when they tag things with phrases like "free code hosting forever" and so on. For them to change, they'd have to either: 1) Support every…

This is the problem with proprietary cloud services. As long as they're hosted by and run by a single company, you can't be sure they'll stick around.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#77

Post by pbreit »

lnanek2 wrote: post #34
gtaylor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: The parent comment was flagkilled, but he was ranting about how Google should be expected to keep Google Code (and their other failed services) on life support indefinitely out of the kindness of their heart, because negative public perception. This is pretty ridiculous. It is a free service, sustained only by how long corporate wants to foot the bill. This is why it's so important to keep in mind how sustainab…

Honestly, I think he was right. Google has a really bad image problem right now where lots of people don't want to get involved with their projects because Google will most likely kill the project just like Reader and Glass. See my couple of wasted Google Glass devices that will never see an Android update again. Do you think I'll ever buy a Google Android product after they wasted $3k of mine? Do you think I'll buy…

Killing reader was a terrible idea. That cut my daily google usage in half and was obviously a key social and relevance asset.

Glass is still very much alive.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#78

Post by vidarh »

hackuser wrote: post #44
baggachipz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be feeding here, but the lesson is that you can't count on things Google releases to be around very long. Even APIs for popular products, like Google Maps. Just don't expect anything they release to have a long shelf life. It's annoying and it sucks, and it is now laughable when they tag things with phrases like "free code hosting forever" and so on. For them to change, they'd have to either: 1) Support every…

> Support everything into eternity 'Eternity' overstates it. Plenty of vendors support projects long after they are obsolete. IBM supported OS/2, released 1992 and a marketplace flop, until the end of 2006. That means that if I need something to be around for awhile, I'll count on IBM and not Google. Google has the perogative to make that choice, of course, and long-term support generally is associated more with the…

And for OS/2, IBM even allowed it to live on by licensing it to a third party:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EComStation

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#79

Post by 51Cards »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #65

I'm not surprised, and yeah, I've assumed code on Google Code is abandoned by default. But, you know, just yet another Google product biting the dust.

While I've been sad to see a lot of Google projects come to and end I think this one is justifiable. I don't know of any active projects still hosted there.

Re: Bidding farewell to Google Code

#80

Post by lake99 »

cdibona wrote: post #2

Hi everyone. I wanted to let you know (and I know this isn't a huge surprise) that we will be shutting down the Google Code project hosting system over the next year. Wired did a nice story about Github that touches on the shutdown: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-microso... I'll be hanging around answering questions, but the short form of 'why' is that it just isn't used much anymore, ourselves…

Thank you for taking questions. Can you give me a rough idea when you'll have the bitbucket migration tools in place?
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