Google Code Search

Yesterday, Google publicly released their source code search tool - which is pretty nice. I'd not like to be koders or krugle just now (hey, this is just like when Microsoft used to release products, back in the day!)

When people wonder what possible chink there could be in Google's armor: this is it. Specialization of presentation - of interface - tends to win over time. This is at once less of a chink and more of chink than I think people generally think (I think :)).

That is, although I do believe in the power of specialization over consolidation, from a UI perspective, that doesn't necessarily speak to economies of scale, from an execution perspective - it only addresses user fickleness and opportunities for behaviour disruptions.

On a minor note, I'd wish they'd be a *tiny* bit more consistent with the root URLs for their products - as a user, its annoying. For example, their code search product is at http://www.google.com/codesearch, while you reach their blog search at http://blogsearch.google.com or http://www.google.com/blogsearch. For a company that pays attention to the little details of experience, you'd have hoped they'd have codified that at least.

Updated: I take it back (I did say that Google cares about details :)) - http://codesearch.google.com works now; it didn't until well after my post.