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Created in the same era as Google Code Search and likely to meet the same fate.

They can probably file it under hiring costs. It's a very effective branding measure targeted towards all the academics they need.

While researchers have to search for publications all the time, I don't see many use cases for a code search engine.

You've not spent much time trying to use insufficiently documented APIs then. I used Google Code Search all the time -- now I search on GitHub.

Since Google is a software company as well as a research laboratory (though I would say it is more prominently the former), I would be surprised that they would kill Code Search but keep Scholar alive as a hiring cost.

I think the "research" feature is way more recent. OTOH, it appears to be targeted at high school students writing an history essay, more than to people discussing phd level algebra.

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