Code Search is dead. Long live Code Search.

January 19, 2012 8:23 AM

"Google turned off Code Search earlier this week." Google announced Code Search's impending departure last October (to unhappiness). Russ Cox, one of the original authors of Code Search and one of the head Go engineers (previously and previouslier) has published an explanation of how Code Search worked, and enough code that you can run similar queries on your own machine.
posted by mkb (17 comments total)

Why is google getting rid of all their good stuff and adding bad stuff? I want my old google back :(
posted by empath at 8:41 AM on January 19 [7 favorites]

being not evil is unsustainable.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:47 AM on January 19 [4 favorites]

Well, they have not yet discontinued Go or RE2. Yet.
posted by mkb at 8:49 AM on January 19

I clicked every link* and I still don't know what Code Search is (was).


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*I even read some of what was there!
posted by notyou at 8:52 AM on January 19

I'll never understand why Google, who should know what "googeable" means, named that language "Go".
posted by DU at 8:59 AM on January 19 [6 favorites]

DU: I'll never understand why Google, who should know what "googeable" means, named that language "Go".

It's not that hard to search for "go language", and the results are high quality.
posted by gilrain at 9:01 AM on January 19

I'll never understand why Google, who should know what "googeable" means, named that language "Go".

or "Plus" for that matter. I mean really.
posted by empath at 9:04 AM on January 19 [3 favorites]

I'll never understand why Google, who should know what "googeable" means, named that language "Go".

or "Plus" for that matter. I mean really.

Well, since they now prioritize their own stuff above the rest of the internet, it isn't hard to find Google's various other things.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:05 AM on January 19

$637 per share better get you a certain earnings growth curve. there's no such thing as angel investing, eventually the devil comes for what he is due...
posted by ennui.bz at 9:14 AM on January 19 [1 favorite]

notyou, this page from the first link provides a succinct explanation of Code Search.
posted by needled at 9:21 AM on January 19 [2 favorites]

Why is google getting rid of all their good stuff and adding bad stuff?

Well, I think they've publicly stated that projects have to actually pay for themselves now, at least in the long term. That's why APIs are starting to be charge instead of free, and why projects like this are getting killed off.
posted by smackfu at 10:19 AM on January 19

I enjoyed it for its entertainment value (self-link), but alas that post is all broken now.
posted by mikepop at 10:28 AM on January 19

Code search is still apparently available.
posted by azarbayejani at 10:38 AM on January 19 [3 favorites]

Why is google getting rid of all their good stuff and adding bad stuff?

Presumably because they don't want to end up like Xerox PARC, a brilliant group of research scientists with no-one working out how to make enough money to avoid closing the place down.
posted by rodgerd at 12:41 PM on January 19 [2 favorites]

And, from the narcissistic "Poor Analogies" department,

LeifJan 19, 2012 01:02 PM
Shutting down code search is as bad as censoring search results. Poor move Google.

posted by IAmBroom at 2:17 PM on January 19

I clicked every link* and I still don't know what Code Search is (was).

Code Search was a special search page on Google to allow programmers to search for snippets of code. Code snippers are usually unsearchable because there's a lot of weird characters like / ; $ ( ) " ' etc. that coders want to search for as you would with regular text.
posted by lubujackson at 3:01 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]

azarbayejani: "Code search is still apparently available."

It's more limited than it used to be, though. It's only for searching Google-hosted projects now, instead of every repository everywhere.
posted by mkb at 3:34 PM on January 20