I'm sure money played some part, but the fact is, unless you have researched code search, it's quite a difficult problem to solve. The biggest problem is, it's very difficult to define relevancy, since code search is EXTREMELY context driven. And I'm guessing purging inactive repositories, addresses most of the noise issues they have.
However, I'm kind of surprised by a blanket purge like this, as I figured they would take repo stars and other signals into consideration to decide what to purge.
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I'm sure money played some part, but the fact is, unless you have researched code search, it's quite a difficult problem to solve. The biggest problem is, it's very difficult to define relevancy, since code search is EXTREMELY context driven. And I'm guessing purging inactive repositories, addresses most of the noise issues they have.
However, I'm kind of surprised by a blanket purge like this, as I figured they would take repo stars and other signals into consideration to decide what to purge.
If it wasn't about money, surely they could have a second index for old code? And then asynchronously query both, filling the fast results in first.
Or maybe have a keyword for searching old code, or search if current results seem bad, etc.