Google reports that have launched Google Code Seach a search tool that searches public source code. There are many ways this could be helpful to a developer. You can search by regular expressions. You can also restrict a search by language, license or filename. A FAQ can be found here.
The success of the Google Maps API taught us that an API doesn't need to be complex to be powerful, and that principle has formed the basis of our API design. If you haven't seen how far cut-and-paste can get you, check out the list of sample applications we've published for the AJAX Search API. Or check out the Google Calendar API examples; to get a feed of your calendar entries, you just need to fetch a single URL from Google's servers.
We have also launched a number of general-purpose developer and open-source tools like Google Web Toolkit and project hosting on Google Code. Our view is what's good for the web is good for Google -- we want users to have the best online experience possible, and we hope these tools will help developers create compelling applications for their users.
Google Blogoscope points out a funny way to search Google Code Search by searching for swear words that grumpy programmers may have inserted in the code. For example, see the search results for sucks -- which is not a swear word but still a grumpy comment a programmer might make when they are frustrated.
