

Google Code Search team says Goodbye - cleverjake
https://groups.google.com/group/google-code-search/browse_thread/thread/fa2e2908c47df068?pli=1

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jbarham
It's worth pointing out that although the Google code search service is going
away, RE2, the regular expression engine built for code search by Russ Cox, is
open source (<http://code.google.com/p/re2/>). RE2 is also the basis for Go's
regexp package (<http://weekly.golang.org/pkg/regexp/>).

See <http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp3.html> for the original writeup from
Russ.

~~~
gujk
What does rsc have to say to jwz about using regexes to match a language?

~~~
mhd
What's the problem using regexps for _searching_ stuff? It's even quite common
for lexing, it just gets ugly if try to _parse_ stuff with it (brace matching
etc.).

(And IIRC, the quote originated from a piece of code where jwz actually _did_
use regexps quite a lot, if just to get enough performance out of elisp)

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ryanbraganza
Interesting to see the note about ChromiumOS/Android...

"There is something of a silver lining. googlecode.com will take over search
for their projects, and also take over hosting the Chromium search page. (If
ChromiumOS or Android are important to you, reach out to whatever contacts you
have at Google _now_ and let them know!)There is something of a silver lining.
googlecode.com will take over search for their projects, and also take over
hosting the Chromium search page. (If ChromiumOS or Android are important to
you, reach out to whatever contacts you have at Google _now_ and let them
know!)"

~~~
tensor
Does anyone know the reason for referencing Android and ChromiumOS in such a
context? Surely they are not implying that Google's considering shutting those
projects down. Are there perhaps some ChromiumOS/Android specific search
systems?

edit: I assume they are referring to this
[http://www.google.com/codesearch/p?hl=en#uX1GffpyOZk/core/ja...](http://www.google.com/codesearch/p?hl=en#uX1GffpyOZk/core/java/android/)

~~~
evmar
[http://codesearch.google.com/codesearch#&exact_package=c...](http://codesearch.google.com/codesearch#&exact_package=chromium)
is a specific instance of codesearch for Chrome code. It even cross-references
code to its users/implementations, something that it doesn't do for other
code.

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nikcub
Google Code Search is the only search engine that indexes GitHub repositories.
I find that almost all open source projects are in GitHub in one way or
another, and GH doesn't let you search the actual code

I use it, and I know other people do, to find software exploits. For eg. here
is a search to find open source software that trusts the X-Forwarded-For HTTP
request header:

[http://www.google.com/codesearch#search/&q=%22X_FORWARDE...](http://www.google.com/codesearch#search/&q=%22X_FORWARDED_FOR%22&type=cs)

[http://koders.com/default.aspx?s=%22X_FORWARDED_FOR%22&s...](http://koders.com/default.aspx?s=%22X_FORWARDED_FOR%22&search.x=0&search.y=0&la=*&li=*&scope=)

I hope GitHub implement their own code search now

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cleverjake
I was really happy to see an honest reaction from the team in a public way. I
do think that in the long run Page's streamlining of Google's products is a
good thing for the company, but I do hate to see something I used go away.

~~~
sdiwakar
Likewise, I thought code-search was invaluable. I used it often while coding.

The plus side is that the team could reflect honestly (and in public). At some
companies, commenting publicly would be a career limiting move.

~~~
hessenwolf
And you really think it isn't here?

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js2
This really surprises me. Code Search is an engineering-centric tool. I'd
think Google would want to keep it just for their own internal code base. What
are the Chromium folks going to use now?

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mindslight
_netcraft confirms it ..._

I can't help but feel that this is part of a bigger reaction which itself will
slowly kill the company as Google loses its way.

Was a public reason ever given besides "streamlining" ? If Google's business
is getting eyeballs, you'd think an already built service would be a no-
brainer to keep in maintenance mode. I can't imagine it used so many resources
as to make it a net-negative, but perhaps I'm wrong.

~~~
cleverjake
I don't think streamlining was ever even public ally mentioned. It just became
know that's Jobs said that to Page. More to te point, they weren't /getting/
enough eyeballs. Their revenue is more or less through ads, and since the main
listed reason was financial...

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pixelbeat
Pathetic google.

"Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it
universally accessible and useful."

My arse.

With source code becoming increasingly available and important, and already in
a structured format, this goes completely against the above statement.

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rabidsnail
koders.com has most of the features of google code search, minus the regexp
searching.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Yes, but with less relevant results.

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joelhaasnoot
Are these people being fired? Or reassigned into different roles? The email
makes it seem like they're being let go...

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lanstein
Code _search_ is going away.

~~~
cleverjake
My mistake - typo. Fixed the title.

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shareme
That is the second big search task I switched to duckduckgo..

