Example. A cancer researcher, publishes a paper in Nature Genetics. Like this one: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n3/abs/ng.522.html

In that paper she publishes a link to a Google Code repository as supplement materials. For example, in the aforementioned paper there is a link to the following repository: http://code.google.com/p/glu-genetics/

Given she published the paper and link, she should either a) take responsibility for the general availability of the materials, and b) make sure that if people email her for the materials (after finding that they're not available on Google Code) she shares them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for retaining the materials and knowledge, etc etc. I'm just having a hard time understanding why you expect Google to do the work and maintain it? What if she uploaded her materials to Megaupload, or any of the hundred other filesharing sites - would you hold them to the same standard? Why doesn't the journal that published the paper (which, has a revenue stream) host the material, given that it directly supports their work?

Megaupload did not hold itself out as a repository for original work.

Megaupload is not run by Google, with the stated mission of organizing the world's information.

Megaupload is bankrupt. Google is one of the richest technology companies in history.

This is not Megaupload throwing away its hoard of 90's B movies. This is Google, knowingly and literally throwing away coding history. We don't even know what might be thrown away.

What if some currently unknown researcher wrote his first code and uploaded it to Google code and forgot about it, and turned out to be the next Zuckerberg or even Turing?

What if some valuable research that was entrusted to Google from a deceased researcher suddenly disappears?

There are likely many more unintended consequences stemming from such an act, and I don't think we should give Google a pass, especially since Google controls possibly the largest collection of computers on the planet. (besides, source code tends to compress pretty well!)

Seems like the least they could do is stick it in an 'unlimited' Google Drive and lock it as read only.

Great example. In 2-10 years from now, someone will want to find that repository.

Does anyone know of an effort to maintain this, like is done with sequencing data at the NIH? Something like PubMed Central?

I have first hand experience with this on the biology side, looking for reagents or even protocols from a 10 year old paper...and coming up completely dry. It's kind of a travesty, but the world collectively shrugged.

Handling and archiving supplementary materials should be the responsibility of the journal (like distributing and archiving the article itself). They should discourage linking to 3rd party websites where the author published his/her work.

I'm pretty sure that Google Code had a TOS where they stated that they don't guarantee that your repository is safe there forever.

There could be several reasons for closing a repository including Google going bankrupt. The availability of a scientific article should be much longer (ideally infinity) than the lifetime of any company.

It may not be valuable to the author. That does not mean it's not valuable to some future searcher.

Right.

Researchers would kill to have the balled-up scraps of paper that (e.g) Shakespeare threw in the trash.

Are we supposed to believe that Google does not understand the value of CITATIONS and PERMALINKS?