Google has released a beta version of their desktop search tool which runs on Windows XP and 2000 SP3+. Details can be found here and more in depth reviews here and here. Its release is amid more concerns of privacy, many of which began when Google’s Gmail system was introduced. Update: AOL wishes the same.
Google Desktop Search Tool Goes Beta
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Adam Scheinberg
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What about other OSs? on Linux (X or GNOME/KDE or Mozilla or whatever it runs like) and Mac OS X and errr…
Hmm, if it only was able to index/work with Konqueror, FireFox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and on linux… and was called some cool name like bugle, or baggle or something…
Let’s get this out of the way:
It doesn’t run on Linux. It doesn’t run on Mac. That’s the marketshare they are playing with right now: Windows users who run XP or 2000.
As of today, it doesn’t search Firefox, Gaim, Trillian, OpenOffice.org, PDFs, and many other types of files that are likely to be popular with the open source crowd. It’s a beta and it’s the very first release. I’d venture to say it’s likely that support for many of these will be added. Let’s remember that gaim and trillin, incidentally, store conversations in plain text logs, so they ARE searchable as text files.
Google’s motives are always questionable. Not because they are evil (I personally don’t think they are), but because they are eventually going to unite all the data they are collecting and provide a universal experience that can link you to everything you do and have done. This is good OR bad, depending on how you view it. Certainly no worse than ebay/paypal and/or MS Passport. Passport, by the way, can be linked to a credit card.
Time will tell how far this application can reach, but today’s beta is almost definitely NOT the end product. Like gmail, it will probably have expanded capabilities soon enough.
My god people, the thing is beta! The average user in america most likely runs Windows XP, so targeting the majority to test this BETA would be the right step. I’m sure Google has plans to expand this product to other OS’s and etc…, but you have to start somewhere and gather data.
Personally I enjoy Google’s desktop search, because the built in search engine with Windows XP is horrible!
I wonder what type of database they use to index the files. The app is only 400kb … amazing.
In a few months, mac os x users will be able to upgrade to Tigher with the new Spotlight search, which will no doubt be even cooler…….
It’s interesting that when all of the rumors started about the google web browser, I thought it might be something bigger. I don’t think a browser would be a big revenue or marketshare enhancer. Maybe I’m wrong (I am just guessing after all) but the developers that google poached specialized in more than just web-browsers. There were also user interface developers and I thought, “what if google wasn’t just building a browser but an entire desktop?”. So now there’s a google desktop search tool and google is playing with the gecko runtime engine, so all they need is an app launcher of some sort and maybe a file manager and they can put up a replacement desktop that would run on anything firefox (gecko) runs on. Perhaps google can do what microsoft was afraid that netscape would do, make the OS irrelevant; you just pull up your google desktop and it doesn’t matter what is underneath.
I could be 100% wrong, but I think it’s a very interesting concept.
it’s incredible….
winfs is not yet ready,from the linux side there is nothing
except beagle (i guess )
and google with a little 400k stuff can indicize your desktop
files,mails word everithing…..
simply beautiful.
I don’t really see the use for this search utility until every file has associated metadeta that can produce meaningful search results. Most of the time I want to search for data files, not text based documents.
i am still waiting for Google to release their own Linux distro :^P
Spike, they’ve already been able to search word documents and pdfs in their main search engine, so it probably wasn’t that hard for them to add some hooks to the Windows API to allow searching of the desktop.
It’s cool, but I just know people are going to be confused about going to http://www.google.com, and getting local results. “Does this google desktop program send all my data to google? Will everybody in the world see my content? …”
I think the name is a bit wrong: it seems to suggest it searches your desktop, but it searches your C: drive. They should consider something like ehm… hmm.. let’s see… I got it! “My Google”
Anyway, I store all my files on D:, so it’s of no value to me. And ofcourse, I don’t want to use it, untill I know what the plan is for this software because I’m always concerned with my privacy.
What if someone creates some spyware or virus, that makes the internal google webserver an external webserver, then your personal index is easy to search by others (port 4664) which would be not so good.
The application itself is only 400k but it consumes about 500 MB of space, according to the O’Reilly article.
Soon all local filesystems on all computers will be deprecated and replaced with a giant network storage owned by Google or/and Microsoft that holds your data as well as other’s data. It’s a logical step – this way they can rid themselves of so many problems… That, of course, unless Linux rises to world domination before this technology matures.
This tool is a great work of art for searching local files, emails, etc. The index file for winxp w/ about 12,000(small amount) indexed items is kept in windowsprefetch and it’s about 10kn in size so far.
I wish I could say more than “so far, so cool” but I’ll wait til my eyes stop buggin out. This thing is blazingly FAST.
As this is a local web server, surely it’s a relatively small step to allow others on your network to search your local filesystem (alright, permissions and actual file sharing will add to the complication somewhat but the concept’s there!). This is something along the lines of what Apple does already with iTunes/iPhoto. Perhaps Google should investigate Rendezvous/Zeroconf technology?
Funny how MS had to pull the network functionality of WinFS from the initial release of Longhorn when Google already have a suitable framework in place now. D’oh!!
I know is still a beta. But how comes I need to work as administrator to use it?
IMHO Copernic Desktop Search (http://www.copernic.com) is better – it indexes more (PDFs, MP3s, Outlook contacts).
I had to install it as admin, but I’m now using it with a non-admin (limited) user, although in the past I’ve given my login user a few additional registry key rights for other applications (so that might be why). What happens when you try to use it with a non-admin user?
dont almost all OS’s hav a built in search or whereis feature? y would i want to do it from a web browser… not to mention the security risks this could bring up. and to top it off i dont like or use google and never will, for anything.
Yes, if you consider find, grep and which glued together with pipes to be a “search feature”. The point is that this unites the functionality of different types of search and makes it point-and-click easy – can you see anyone’s grandmother learning how to use grep any time soon?
This is pretty awesome.. i just started it and its wow.. only 250ish items cuz i just formatted. but i really like the idea.
Well it says something like: “you can use this program only if you have administrative rights”. Clearly I have installed it as administrator.
For an office environment running the standard Outlook/Word/Excel/PowerPoint/IE combo this is absolutely great. Stick in support for Visio and in my book it’s a killer office app. Firefox would be cool too. Very nice…Google does it again.
My bad. I had just installed it using “Run As” and the setup program had automatically launched it afterwards (as Administartor)…so that’s why it worked immediately for me. Running it now, I get the message:
“Google Desktop Search can only run when the user who installed it is logged on.”
Not sure what that means…although we can guess that it’s a permissions problem.
But I found a bit of a workaround. If you start the Google Desktop Search as Administrator, then other users can use it (although they won’t see the icon in the taskbar). So I setup a scheduled task that is run as Administrator when the computer first starts. Seems to work fine. Two problems:
1) The user gets an error when running it themselves.
2) They have to know the exact URL (or have a saved link).
Anyway, it’s in beta so we could have expected issues, but it can still work. Good work, Google! Keep it coming.
on linux there is beagle,a search engine indexer
the problem is that the gui is only a window
while the backend is completely unstable….
To be complete, this is the official google answer to this question:
http://desktop.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10722&topic=…
Although using the technique I posted above, it seems to work anyway.
“Yes, if you consider find, grep and which glued together with pipes to be a “search feature”. The point is that this unites the functionality of different types of search and makes it point-and-click easy – can you see anyone’s grandmother learning how to use grep any time soon?”
If you’ve ever used Windows 2000’s find sidebar, I don’t see hwy anyone woulduse Google’s. W2k’s can search inside files easily….
But it’s slower than molasses. If you want to find a document out of 2000+, it seems basically impractical. You can limit based on date, size, etc, but that’s usually too much work and you might filter out the file you wanted anyway.
I was just now trying Windows’ “indexing service” in order to compare to google’s but it doesn’t seem to speed up searching at all. Not sure why…
Here are some screenshots:
http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/screenshots.html
The next version of KDE will include similar functionality built in. If the storage project is still alive, you’ve got that for gnome. We all know what apple has planned for the Mac, perhaps that is one reason why this is windows only. Also, remember ppl, this is a beta. It is possible we’ll see it on other platforms in the future..
I wonder if there are people who keep their computer so cluttered that they need a search engine to find stuff.
For me, find/grep works like a charm but well i keep my data quite organized.
What i didn’t like about this program is searching email etc. I would much rather like it to give me an option to index directories i want and then search from there.
Reason: I download lots of technical stuff, but everytime i need something, i have to google it and re-get it from internet. It would be cool if i could search the 10 GB contents stored on my hard disk instead.
Wish google makes a search tool like that rather than giving integrated search including email, video etc.
Perhaps you didn’t get the point about the desktop Google. It does search within the files of your computer. At this moment they started from Office and Outlook things, but I think they can soon start searching in other documents, too. I see that the Program FilesGoogle contains DLL, which look like plugins Google uses for searching a specific type of files.
Any search tool can be filtered or limited to the use you want them to do. You can give options not to search in email, IM history and so on.
“Yes, if you consider find, grep and which glued together with pipes to be a “search feature”. The point is that this unites the functionality of different types of search and makes it point-and-click easy – can you see anyone’s grandmother learning how to use grep any time soon?”
I think slocate and updatedb work just fine for me, (yeah, with some fine tuning from a simple “grep -i <word>”).
I don’t think Grandmothers would even use this tool anyway.
I emailed them about it and this is what they wrote back:
Thank you for your suggestion. As you may know, Google Desktop Search isn’t currently available for Linux. Right now we’re putting all of our energy into making Desktop Search the best program we can. We realize that a lot of our users would like us to offer a Linux version, however, and we may consider this option in the future.
Get used to it! Until there is unified standard across distributions, there will not be a linux product. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll get one version for RHEL. I’m sure everyone will still whine that distribution x is not supported.