Google Code Shutting Down

in google on 2015-03-12 20:50 (#4TQX)

Google's project hosting service, Google Code, is the latest Google product to get the axe. Launched in 2006, the site hosted many FLOSS-type software projects and provided free downloads, source code management, an issue tracker, and wiki pages. Although new project creation is already disabled, the site will stay functional until August 2015 in order to give projects time to migrate to alternatives, such as GitHub and GitLab.

With so many high-profile Google services inexplicably closing, one has to wonder if relying on the continued availability of any Google services is a good idea. Of course, closures are not always exclusive to Google. Gitorious and Freecode are recent examples of other project development sites that have recently shut their doors.

Explicable (Score: 3, Insightful)

by mth@pipedot.org on 2015-03-12 22:37 (#4TX6)

I think "inexplicably" is not the right word here: Google Code is not making money (search), is not a strategic investment (Android) and is not breaking new ground (self-driving cars). The only reason to keep it around would be loyalty to its users, but that doesn't seem to be high on their list of priorities.

Relying on the continued availability of a third party service is a risk, no matter whether the service provider is a startup (see Our Incredible Journey) or a large established company like Google. At least in the case of project hosting, it is relatively easy to migrate to a different service, which is not always the case when other services or APIs get shut down.