Another front in the on-going battle between Microsoft and Google is about to be opened. By the end of 2004 Microsoft aims to launch search software to find any kind of file on a PC hard drive. The move is in answer to Google’s release of its own search tool that catalogues data on desktop PCs. The desktop search market is as Google, AOL, Yahoo and many smaller firms tout programs that help people find files.
Search wars hit desktop computers
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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A repeat of the browser wars perhaps? Not likely. But we may see some great search technology come out of this. Personally I’d love to see something like Linux’s slocate command & database.
Seeing all these “search engines” on a local machine tells
me some nicer way of managing files is needed.
And if nothing else, thwy should atleast be more realtime, so
each time you search you always search the latest files..
Please help us to help you to help us, that’s what it is.
I saw on the news that they also released a desktop search tool.. Beeing a user of Agent, I find their desktop solutions very well suited to users..
….when every darn thing that happens in our industry is no longer shown in light of some kind of war between rich people.
There IS a locate for windows. Sorry, don’t have time to provide a link, but there is at least one version.
Oh well, my BeOS can find any file, without extra programs, companies, or whatever
. Long live BeFS!
Is there supposed to be a link to a story? Or is this just a random “we need news” thing?
I miss BeOS’s search technologies
Wans’t there supposed to be something like it being developed for GNOME? And wouldn’t it be nice if GNOME could use the locate database?
sure search war is building up, but my question is that how many of you need to search for files that too dip? Not me. I barely even use search feature of WinXP.
if you organise them nicely at the time of saving it then you don’t need search engine.
“Oh well, my BeOS can find any file, without extra programs, companies, or whatever
. Long live BeFS!”
every OS search feature does that
it is just a case of doing it smartly!
no need to bring BEOS in this.
sure BEOS is good I also kinda liked it but stop whinning about it.
I am very much annoyed by all such posts
even if it is firefox article Opera users throw mud at them if article is about Opera firefox users throw mud at opera users.
I would suggest Egunia to take some serious action against such posters
Anyone who’s used the beta of Google Desktop knows that it’s nowhere near ready for widespread use. You have to be logged in as admin to even use it, plus it’s skimpy interface is awful. Their “Less is More” approach may have worked for the web, but it won’t work on the desktop. And don’t even start about security (or lack thereof) on it. It’s not even a half-baked product at this point; Google has their work cut out for them.
@Mike: Copernic is very powerful and is probably the best search tool out there right now for Windows, however it’s pretty resource intensive (lots of memory)…so it’s a tradeoff. I recommend it highly though.
@Thom: You can currently do this on Windows as well, however as we all know, performance is hideous. Performance gains can be increased by turning on Index Service, however this introduces some resource consumption issues, and wreaks havoc on ASP.NET applications.
Start – Search – For Files and Folders
I can find any file on my system using that, why do I want more software to do the same thing?
BeOS search features? Ah, well if you miss those, then look no further than Mac OS X Tiger, which will include those technologies, ever since Apple hired that guy formerly from BeOS, to help with Spotlight > http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html
Apple also anounced a move into this
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlighttech.html
…they aready have quick-silver and some other programs (open source, i recall) that already do it.
i agree that we don’t have to search for files. at WinXP i only use the search to find some system dlls in the clumsy /windows folder.
BUT, you must agree that befs realy was years ahead.
sadly they stoped there and wait for the rest to came.
And the guy that miss slocate. it’s merely a regular dumb-search cache. what they’re talking here is something more advanced, like beFS
where you don’t search the file by it’s name but by it’s content.
> I can find any file on my system using that, why do I want more software to do the same thing?
Because the damn Windows XP search does not search all files for the given content. This means if you search for some text only Microsoft Files (DOC, XLS, PPT) and default text files (.TXT) and perhaps some vendor specific files (PDF) are searched for the given search string. But Pascal source files, PHP, JAVA or anything else is not searched! Bad, that the google desktop search is also restricted, at least they state this much more obvious…
There are some registry hacks to give the search function of XP the ability to search in other file extensions, but the default search is so bad 🙁
I’d rather use the old Windows 95 search tool than this crappy webpage like search side bar.
kio-locate is a very nice idea. It allows you to use locate:filename in all KDE file dialogs and also in konqueror. It gives you a list of all files found by locate and you can click on one of the files to open it. I think it is a really cute idea. You can get it from http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=17201&PHPSESSID=e3…
“Wans’t there supposed to be something like it being developed for GNOME? And wouldn’t it be nice if GNOME could use the locate database?”
It´s called Beagle.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/
Oh, this is retarded! most operating systems have ways to search for files.
Is there supposed to be a link to a story?
I was wondering that, too. I actually submitted news about this some days ago, a Washington Post review of Google’s search-your-computer tool, but it never appeared; instead we get this. I dunno what to think.
Thanks lon!
Oh, this is retarded! most operating systems have ways to search for files.
Um, but not all OS’s can search files fast and in the almost instantaneous manner that others can.
Anyone here remember Lotus Magellan, which I consider the best DOS application of all time, period?
Lotus released Magellan around the same time it released Agenda, another great app that has no direct peer in anu OS. I used Magellan on every DOS-based machine I ever owned. I miss it to this day.
Magellan indexed your drive, displayed hits in an easy to use and easy to manipulate format, and knew how to handle just about every file format of that era. It supported keyboard macros and scripting. Using a TSR, it updated its index in real-time. You could perform any number of actions on the files returned from a query, including compressing them in a zip file. And, oh, it had a built-in editor.
Anyone building a desktop search app needs to look at Magellan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3952285.stm
(tag is malformed in the article so it doesn’t render for most)
Locate does everything I need it to. Now if I could just get it running on my Mac….
Everyone, have a look at ISYS:Desktop. That is the most awesome search tool ever invented for Windows – there is a trial version available.
It can index all your files – it even indexes your mails and docs inside compressed archives (zip).
You can use all kinds of crazy expressions for searching or just plain text.
An average advanced search takes between 1-3 seconds to complete. the results are sorted in relevance order.
You can save searches, index www and ftp servers, etc. etc.
I’ve been using it for a long time with a repository over 5GB (incl. many small files)
have a look ( http://www.isysusa.com/products/desktop )… I am not affiliated with the company but I just love it!!!
There have already been several programs that map the information on your hard drive and provide many different kinds of searches. They came and went – nobody noticed.
Now Google is doing it and Microsoft feels encroachment into its space.
Just like the browser – we’ll see a new search API built into the core OS that will be impossible to remove or disable.
You’ll have search on the Start Menu, search on Quick Launch, search on desktop, search in title bars – search everywhere. There will be a goofy picture of “Bob” smiling at you while you search.
The only thing is – it won’t quite work right with non-Microsoft products.
It will be indexing everything you do.
It will slow your computer down. You’ll need to upgrade. But hey, it’s progress.
Hackers will figure out to hack it as steal all your personal data.
Microsoft will start a new security initiative program.
AV vendors will make millions writing software to protect you from these new features.
Nobody will use the search after the curiosity wears off.
ROFL! So True!
Just like WMP now, doesn’t matter how hard you try to avoid it, it always finds a way to get in your face and piss you off (:
For Windows, the program is called Locate32, and the website is:
http://www.uku.fi/~jmhuttun/english/softwares.shtml.
I found it lighter and ‘simpler’ than google search – and in many ways better. I mean, the whole point of using Google as a search engine is the ranking system – on your desktop, I feel it’s just another caching search tool. (Although locate32 doesn’t do file contents).
mt: Because Window’s default search (without indexing, which IMHO pretty much blows anyway), on a 80 Gb drive with millions of files, well…be prepared to make a nice, long cup of coffee. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll be done when you have great-grandkids. (and that’s just searching in filenames…searching for strings in a file *brrr* *shudder*).
jayson knight: Sorry, but I think that’s you’re mistaken. You don’t have to be longed in as Admin, you merely have to be a member of the Admin group – and if you use WinXP for any extended period of time, you’ll probably end up having to be a member of this anyway (su > runas *grin*).
Also, anybody know where the google database is stored?
bye,
Victor
Maybe that’s why they are never first – always plagiarizing, let the others find out which technology, then catchup and make the steal.
The next kick when they again will have to move is maybe gbrowser. Then it’s time for an IE overhaul.
I know many people do not turn it on, but I find the Indexing Service does a pretty good job. Free iFilters are around for indexing .pdf, .rtf, .jpg, and some other formats that aren’t done natively. Combined with the wonderful FileLocator Pro (http://www.mythicsoft.com/default.aspx) I feel well armed for searching.
How can people say the built-in Windows searching is o.k. when it takes f@$@%! (sorry) ages to saerch and won’t find anything anyway because of different bugs and restrictions.
And besides the fact that “Locate32” is free (which is always cool) it might not do what you like…
We need full multi-format indexing and in-document fast searching…. yes it is me who posted about ISYS:Desktop above
Does anyone have experiences with any other proper (preferably free( or cheap)/opensource) fast indexing and in-document full-text search applications??
Thanks.
DI
Who realy needs it? Seems to me the software industry is indeed in some sort of a crisis.How long is grep ,find locate
part of UNIX,*.BSD,Linux?It’s nothing new besides a GUI.
I think the issue here is to search by contents and not by file metadata, therefore, mentioning “locate”-like tools is irrelevant.
Bye
When your system contains >200,000 files in >60 GB, these built-in searches can take up minutes and minutes of hard disk abuse. When I want to locate a text withhin a file, I want the result now, not after I get coffee.
Plus, with every migration of my system, I create a trail of useless files that I don’t want to throw out, yet I never have the time to rearrange them. If I wanted to view my old “All Your Base are…” flash video, I’m certain that the quickest way right now is, search the web and download again. Even though I’m certain that it’s on my system, somewhere.
What’s new is an index covering every word written on my hard disk, plus some speedy algorithm calculating proximity of different search terms.
Although “new” isn’t the right term. “Available to the masses” is better.
What’s new is an index covering every word written on my hard disk, plus some speedy algorithm calculating proximity of different search terms.
Correct me if i’m wrong, this locale google system new to the masses in fact makes a database out of the whole harddisk?
Mmm me stating BeOS was seen as off-topic by some people– but that simply is not true. Microsoft and Apple are now trying to implement features like WinFS and Spotlight that are simply extra services/layers on top of the OS that facilitate in the searching of files by searching their content- while BeOS with BeFS had that built in on the filesystem level, and therefore it didn’t waste resources like WinFS and Spotlight and others will certainly do.
Therefore, it is not off-topic to mention the OS that has all this lauded functionality built in, without wasting precious resources. For years.
http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/
They just probably never tried BeOS
[revol@patrick ~]$ time query ‘(MAIL:from==*[Ee]ugenia*)&&(MAIL:subject==*BeOS*)’
/boot/home/mail/tree/BeOS/divers/Open BeOS 20010824233845 Eugenia Loli-Queru
real 0m0.220s
user 0m0.002s
sys 0m0.167s
That’s on a 20G partition with 4843 mails in.
Of course queries don’t work with content of files, but for everything else metadata in indexed attributes is way better anyway. And if I really need to find by content I just find . -type f -exec grep foo {} ; -print.
I cant believe nobody ever mentions this.. Its 10X better then the google desktop tool at the moment, and is usable for everything
http://www.nat.org/dashboard
Some people sure are very slow. The latest push for advanced search tools is not just about finding a specific word document you have misfiled. It is about FAST searching your filesystem by use of an indexing catalog/database and in-document searching. Just look at what beagle is trying to accomplish for the gnome desktop (and will!). It will also search email and IM chats. And that lame comment someone has made about origanising his/her folders and knowing where everything is, sure does not grasp the direction these search application are heading towards. Administration of your folders will not need to be important if such a search tool is fast and intuitive to use.
To think about what the future of these search applications might be:
*Search your computer for any picture with a certain background in it e.g like the sea or pictures which has human figures in them.
*Search your PC for all movies that has your favourite actor in the cast.
*Search your PC for enormous files that may be converted to a space saving format to create more space on your hard drive
The potential for a well thought out integrated search framework is immense and will make many tasks trivial to accomplish instead of you slogging around.
I’d have to agree. Quite possibly one of the reasons that I do not use my PDA as often is because it is too ineffecient to search. A Beagle like interface (With incremental search
) would go a long way on a PDA.
Seems like everyone on here is trashing the desktop search feature and has never even tried it.
Well, I’ve actually tried it. Google desktop search is very cool. The windows search tool is very slow and clunky IMO. Google searches all the office formats, Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail (online), web history, and AIM. Gives a search result instantly, just like a standard Google search result.
Of course all the gearheads on here probably don’t use any of the above products, but 90+% of the world does so I think 90+% of users will find this tool very useful.
C’mon, think. Of course you can already search your filesystem, but you can’t do it instantaneously. Imagine if Google searched the web as “quickly” as Windows searched your disk. The Internet would be very different if web searches were as bad as FS searches on most OSs; and your PC would be very different if FS searches were immediate.
Speed is not just better, it completely changes what you can do with a computer. In BeOS, for example, you can do a search for all JPG files, and the query results pop open so quickly, it’s as if you already had them in a single folder. If you create a new JPG file, it instantly appears in your query folder. The query folder behaves like an ordinary directory folder.
Think about that for a moment. You might keep all your docs in a single directory for convenience, but suddenly you leave them anywhere—if you want them in a single folder, just open a query. This doesn’t just search the filesystem, but starts to replace it.
I can’t begin to list all the ways this can change not only the way you work, but the organization of the OS itself. Who needs a registry, for example? Or a “Documents and Settings” directory? There is no need to keep anything centralized, because you can always conjure up a folder that temporarily places things in a centralized “location”.
Caj
I suspect that when the Search Wars come to an end, the winner will be whatever company is employing Dominic Skywalk—I mean, Giampaolo.
Caj
Not nescesarily. There are so many types of files in the world, that the query for “misc” would simply become too large.
Eugenia, it would be nice, if you gave the link to original press-release or whatever source you have used.
Didn’t see anyone mention AvaFind…..
” Find Instantly
Search without delay ”
By the time I type a 4th letter in, list with results is already waiting , and shrinking as finish typing. why wait 2-3 min in Search Files when I got answer in 0.03 sec.
Try for yourself
http://www.think-less-do-more.com/avafind/
Think about that for a moment. You might keep all your docs in a single directory for convenience, but suddenly you leave them anywhere—if you want them in a single folder, just open a query. This doesn’t just search the filesystem, but starts to replace it.
No, it *supplements it*. The purpose of a filesystem is to store data on the disk. *Organising* that data is not a filesystem function, it is an activity the filesystem enables.
I can’t begin to list all the ways this can change not only the way you work, but the organization of the OS itself. Who needs a registry, for example? Or a “Documents and Settings” directory? There is no need to keep anything centralized, because you can always conjure up a folder that temporarily places things in a centralized “location”.
This would be bad from a performance perspective. Remember, a second or two to find a document might seem fast to an end user, but for an OS constantly performing thousands of such lookups just to get basic functionality, it’s going to be *slow*. If it’s trivial to centralise things (eg: OS files or the Registry) then that should be done – a pre-sorted list is always going to be faster than an on-demand query, no matter how good of a sorting/searching tool you have.