Skip to main content

Google Code is closing down because developers aren't using it

Google Code is closing down because developers aren't using it

/

Programmers prefer GitHub and Bitbucket

Share this story

Google is closing its programming project hosting service, Google Code, after nine years of operations. Google stopped users from creating new projects yesterday and will make existing project read-only this August, ahead of a complete closure scheduled for January 25th, 2016. The search giant says it started Google Code when project hosting options were limited, but since launch in 2006, it's seen a "wide variety of better project hosting services" such as GitHub and Bitbucket rise to the forefront.

Google has transferred projects to GitHub

To "meet developers where they are," Google itself has transferred nearly a thousand of its own open-source projects to the popular coding repository GitHub. The migration of developers to new services has left Google Code dealing with a deluge of spam and abuse — the company says that recently the administrative load has consisted almost entirely of abuse management, and when it polled the remaining constructive projects, it decided the service wasn't worth maintaining.

The closure is the latest in a line of projects Google has shuttered after they were beaten out by opponents. But Google Code was not another Google Wave — Google's programming repository existed before the current industry leaders, and the company freely admits its rivals win out in terms of functionality. To that end, developers with projects still on Google Code can port them to GitHub or Bitbucket using dedicated tools noted on the official Google Code blog.