NYT: Google Takes On Your Desktop ("Google Desktop Search")

[DeepModem Mom]

STATE OF THE ART
Google Takes On Your Desktop
By DAVID POGUE

Published: October 21, 2004


....Last week, Google took the wraps off its latest invention: Google Desktop Search. As the name implies, it's software that applies the famous Google search technology to the stuff on your own hard drive. It's free, it's available right now for Windows XP and 2000 (desktop.google.com), and it's terrific.

Like the Windows search program, Google Desktop can find files by name, including photos, music files and so on. But it can also search for words inside your files, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. That's a relief when you can't remember what you named a file, but you do remember what it was about - or when a marauding toddler renamed your doctoral thesis "xggrjpO#$5%////." (Windows offers this feature, too, but it's hard to find, hard to turn on and poorly documented.)

For its final trick, Google Desktop does something so profound it may change the way you think about your PC forever: It can search any Web page you've ever seen, any e-mail message you've opened and the transcript of any instant-message chat you've had....

***

....There is, however, quite a long list of footnotes....For starters, Google Desktop is officially in beta testing, meaning that Google doesn't consider it to be finished. For the moment, its greatest limitation is the list of programs it recognizes. At this point, it can't search Acrobat (PDF) files except by file name. It can't search Web pages you've visited unless Internet Explorer is your browser, chat sessions unless you use AOL Instant Messenger, or e-mail unless you use Outlook or Outlook Express. If you don't use these programs, Google Desktop will seem a lot less essential.

Another consideration: Google Desktop Search is remarkable in the compactness of its code - the entire program fits in a 446-kilobyte download - but installing it requires at least one gigabyte of free hard-drive space. That's because, like similar programs, Google Desktop works by creating what's called an index: a multimegabyte database of the words in all your files. To search vast amounts of material, it needs a healthy swath of space for its index....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/technology/circuits/21stat.html

[TaleWgnDg]

1. Hey, thanks for reminding me; I've been meaning to . . .

download google's new toy.



. . . . . . . . . .



.

[kayell]

5. Damn, I'm never going to be able to eat falafel again

and I did so love them. But now :puke:

[shockingelk]

2. Uh, isn't this called Sherlock

And hasn't it been around since about 1998?

Er, wait ... only geniuses use Mac OS, sorry.

[Nlighten1]

3. Another piece of Google Spyware.

No thanks. This tracks and reports WAY too much information back to Google.

[TaleWgnDg]

6. google tracks nothing . . . at least their toolbar searches nothing

however, you can, if you so desire, engage a "tracking" device that reports back to google but ONLY if you opt-in to do so. That is, check off the box to enable the toolbar to do so.


Spybot Search & Destroy gives google toolbar a clean bill of health as does AdAware, and WinPatrol.


. . . . . . . . . .

[Nlighten1]

8. read up on what this desktop search does...

I wasn't talking about the toolbar. This desktop search is very invasive.

[elifino]

4. More info on Google Desktop Search

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118201,00.asp

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1678974,00.asp

I am running this on one of my home computers,as a test of impact on home network. Not ready to try on network at work.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Thanks for the additional info, elifino --