Since October 6, there is a code search engine available from Google. So it’s already up a while but there is nevertheless something remarkable about that. First of all, it works good. It’s easy to focus the search by defining the implementation language, the license model or package names. But that’s not remarkable by itself. The key point is, that without any rumours up front, the code search engine has gone right into production. Ok, it’s not far from the main product and the index probably integrates well in the “crawl through the web, find everyting and rate it” cylce. And the idea is not new. O’Reilly has put up a code search one month ago. But still Google jumping in and creating a service indicates a growing demand (or at least a growing perception of a demand) in specialized search engines. The original article can be found at vunet.com.