Google Launches Desktop Search Tool

hanky writes "Google brings search to your very desktop with Google Desktop, a mini Google index of your own. Search your filesystem, Outlook or Outlook Express inbox, AIM instant message transcripts, and Internet Explorer cache. There's a full introduction to the Google Desktop over at the O'Reilly Network. It's Windows-only, but still cool enough for this Mac guy to find it intriguing."

Gee - if only I used MS products....

[rueger]

Doesn't work with Mozilla, or Opera, or Pegasus mail, or Eudora..... Guess I'll wait for something less MS centric.

This has to annoy M$...

[Wizzy Wig]

Wasn't Microsoft supposed to solve the Desktop Search problem with their upcoming Longhorn?

Copernic Desktop is another free one

[rei_slashdot]

It can be downloaded here: http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search /index.html [copernic.com] Some not so free ones are X1 Search and dtSearch.

From the TOS:

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you choose to opt out, either during installation or at any time after installation, non-personal information collected will be sent to Google.

No thank you.

Re:Gee - if only I used MS products....

[jayhawk88]

It loads up in Firefox OK for me. Probably does not search Firefox cache though.

On first blush one thing seems troubling though: it seems to run as a pseudo-web page service via 127.0.0.1:4664; hopefully this doesn't expose an open port to the outside world?

Re:I've installed this

[antifoidulus]

Already two Mac people in my office are fairly jealous, because this is what they thought Sherlock would be- but wasn't.
It's also what Spotlight should be...(next release of OS X, Tiger)

Re:Gee - if only I used MS products....

[TheJavaGuy]

Google does support (partially) other browsers. I copied the url into opera and I got the following message:

Our software suggests that you're using a browser incompatible with Google Desktop Search. Google Desktop Search currently supports the following:
Microsoft IE 5 and newer (Download)
While we're still testing Google Desktop Search, you can also click here to use your unsupported browser, though you likely will encounter some areas that don't work as expected. You need to have Javascript enabled, regardless of the browser you use.
We hope to expand this list in the near future and announce new browsers as they become available. In the meantime, you can use IE 5 and newer.

It seems to work fine in opera (for now).

Tell Google what you'd like to see, then

[theluckyleper]

The product is still in beta, and on the About Google Desktop [google.com] page, they say:

"Google Desktop Search is still under development as a beta product. We intend to add new file, email, and chat formats and browsers as Google Desktop Search evolves, and when new formats are created and used. If there's a format you'd like Google Desktop Search to be able to search, please let us know. We can't guarantee that we'll add every type that's suggested, but your suggestions will let us know what formats are important to you."

I'm going to go suggest a couple right now, and get in on the ground floor :)

Sounds like Beagle

[Xpilot]

Linux users can try out Nat Friedman's Beagle [gnome.org], which does something like what Google's desktop does. The Dashboard [nat.org] project uses it to find information pertinent to your current desktop task and displays it in a sidebar. Pretty neat. It's one of the C#/Mono projects that's available for Linux.

gdesktop.com

[diginux]

They own gdesktop.com http://www.directnic.com/whois/index.php?query=gde sktop.com [directnic.com] Why not use it?

Go carefully, GUID present

[Anonymous Coward]

from
http://desktop.google.com/privacypolicy.html

How we use unique application numbers, cookies and related information.

Your copy of Google Desktop Search includes a unique application number. When you install Google Desktop Search, this number and a message indicating whether the installation succeeded is sent back to Google so that we can make the software work better. Additionally, when Google Desktop Search automatically checks to see if a new version is available, the current version number and the unique application number are sent to Google. If you choose to send us non-personal information about your use of Google Desktop Search, the unique application number with this non-personal information also helps us understand how you use Google Desktop Search so that we can make it work better. The unique application number is required for Google Desktop Search to work and cannot be disabled.

thanks but ill stick with the built in search for now

Re:Gee - if only I used MS products....

[balster neb]

Firefox 'partially' supported. See this:

http://desktop.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an swer=10135&topic=96 [google.com]

Anyway, hope they someday release it for an OS other than Windows.

Review

[TheJavaGuy]

Here [searchenginelowdown.com] is a thorough review.

Spotlight will accomplish this on Mac

[nizmogtr]

Don't figure I will need this on Mac, since Spotlight http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html/ [apple.com] will pretty much serve a similiar purpose.

Request new file formats

[illuin]

According to the FAQ, you can request [google.com] that Google Desktop support new file formats.

Of course, what would be really nice is if new formats were supported via plugins, and if google would distribute a simple API so the open source community could contribute new plugins rather than waiting for google to implement them.

Spotlight

[Equuleus42]

It's Windows-only, but still cool enough for this Mac guy to find it intriguing

Apple will be offering a somewhat similar feature called Spotlight [apple.com] in OS X 10.4 next year. The one immediate difference I see between the Google Desktop and Spotlight is that Spotlight will index text contained in PDFs.

Re:might not be a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it does, under preferences.

I love how much people bitch about things they haven't tried or understand here.

Re:Gee - if only I used MS products....

[stevey]

I tested this as soon as I noticed. Seems to bind itself to 127.0.0.1 only.

Re:Better than X1?

[Richard_at_work]

It asks you on install if you would like to allow it to send data and crash reports home. How nice of it.

Re:From the TOS:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you right-click the google desktop search icon, click "preferences," uncheck "Send non-personal usage data and crash reports to Google," and click "Save Preferences." Surely proof that 1984 is now.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[eyeball]

I'm a Mac user, and this made me shrug. The next version of OSX due out (early next year I think) has this feature built-in. What's neat is it's integrated into the OS, and the APIs are exposed, so developers can easily take advantage of it.

Re:Spotlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

> this looks pretty cool, but it's a shame
> they've limited it to a handful of applications.

Nope... I think you misunderstood the concept of Spotlight. Apple provides ready-made converters (plugins) for known data formats, such as Word, PDF, TEXT, etc. Nothing stops developers from writing their converters. It's open, so if you have a proprietary file format, you can write your own converter and let Spotlight do the work. It's darn cool, that's what it is.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a project: http://www.nat.org/dashboard/ [nat.org]

Re:Google search for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it just takes hours longer to query. Thanks, but there's a reason full-text indexing is useful.

Another difference

[TuringTest]

Another important difference is that Spotlight will be able to do incremental search, which is a terribly much better interface for searches.

Re:reverse engineer google

[DJayC]

Somehow I think Google didn't just take their "Google engine" and throw it in an .exe file. In fact, the amount of files on a typical computer could be solved using some kind of SQL database engine, or a simple XML storage system. I don't think this application is about the engine, but about the indexing that takes place. Unless you have a billions of files on your computer, the Google engine would be overkill.

I'd go as far to say that this product has absolutely nothing to do with the "google engine". Just another nice app courtesy of the Google labs. The way it integrates into google.com is kind of freaky, though.

Re:Spotlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotlight is a OS-level search platform and SDK, too. You will be able to write a search plugin that enables the Spotlight system to read and index your particular filetype.

Apple will provide the basic ones (file metadata, email/contacts/calendar, text inside common filetypes like PDF or MS Office, image metadata like format and dimensions, etc).

Then, application developers will be able to extend the system to their filetypes' full capabilities. For example fulltext search inside Illustrator docs which Apple probably won't support out of the box. I would guess this will *not* require installing & managing search components -- they will hide the search plugin within the .app package and the system will detect it. So if you have the app installed, Spotlight magically gains any special search capabilities -- similar to how apps currently register filetypes and Services with the OS.

This means hackers can fill the gaps on open formats -- I saw complaints above about non-AIM/Outlook software being excluded by Google -- for Spotlight, just write a plugin.

Also, developers can include Spotlight facilities in their own apps; it will be an API/widget option.

Happily, this is NOT hardwired into the filesystem -- HFS+ will remain and the indexes for Spotlight are stored in a discrete location by the OS.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[benjj]

I assume that means it integrates with Firefox too.
not really [google.com].

swish-e for unix and OSX

[kirkjobsluder]

You have to read the documentation to set it up, but swish-e [swish-e.org] is an indexing and search system that I've found to be quite effective. It can handle MSWord (with catdoc) , pdf (with xpdf) and mp3 meta tags. It's also not very hard to write a script to extract OpenOffice.org documents to stdout as well. It comes with C and perl bindings and there is a python interface [freeshell.org] as well.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[Anonymous Coward]

Milo of Kroton is a known troll that switched from perfectly fluent English (and something saying he took German in high school) to Gerlish.

I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't checked on it myself, but it's true. This guy used to type perfectly [slashdot.org] fluently [slashdot.org].

Hmm, wonder what happened.

Alternative

[jordanyh]

I have been using another app called Avafind for the longest time now. Google app wouldnt even install becuase it conflicts with netlimiter (no way im uninstalling that one! ) Avafind : http://www.think-less-do-more.com/avafind/ lets see what other ppl think about this app. take care all Yasir

For the mac

[Anonymous Coward]

The is a better tool out there for the mac: QuickSilver

http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

I have been using that for months now and don't know how I could get by without it.

Not bad for a first beta

[abcxyz]

I installed it about an hour or so ago (home pc), and have some 22,000 items indexed, which includes a portion of my work Outlook email (VPN connection, died -- looks like network is down). Searches are very quick, and it's nice that a regular google search checks your desktop search as well. I wish, like every one else that it would search my firefox cache, since I don't use IE at all except for updates. I would rarely need to search my web cache, so that's not a huge problem. Hopefully a future release will add pdf and gmail support as well. For me, IM history is not an issue since we use it so infrequently.

Will install on work PC next week - curious if it follows mapped network drives as well. Maybe I'll finally be able to find the files I've been looking for over the past two years!

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[Destoo]

It does integrate, but is not fully functionnal yet.

>>
Q: I can't find webpages I viewed with Mozilla Firefox.

A:
Google Desktop Search is only partially compatible with Mozilla Firefox. If you install Desktop Search and open a Firefox browser window, you'll see a 'Desktop' link appear on the Google homepage. You can click this link to go to the Desktop Search homepage whenever you want to search with Desktop Search.

Web pages which you view in Firefox aren't added to your Desktop Search index, however, so you won't be able to find them with Desktop Search.

We realize that many of our users use Mozilla Firefox as their primary browser, and we may consider adding increased Firefox support in a future version of Desktop Search.

I Use X1

[PetoskeyGuy]

There is a program called X1 that does the same thing. It's been out for a long time and works with Mozilla Mail and just about everything else on my HD.

http://www.x1.com/ [x1.com]

It also works with a lot more file types.
Here is part of the list [x1.com]

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[Destoo]

It works with firefox, but the full functionality is not ther yet.

the Desktop Google browser caches information and links retreived by IE.
Since FF uses a different method for caching, they need to adapt it for Firefox.

Here's the key quote...

We realize that many of our users use Mozilla Firefox as their primary browser, and we may consider adding increased Firefox support in a future version of Desktop Search.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[the quick brown fox]

Indexing PDFs is not a technically hard problem for anyone writing these kinds of apps (which includes myself). There are components to do the extraction for you [ 1 [adobe.com], 2 [glyphandcog.com], 3 [sourceforge.net], 4 [snowtide.com] ]

I would be very surprised if Google Desktop Search doesn't have this functionality by the time Tiger is released. Are there other ways in which Spotlight goes "WAY beyond"?

Re:I've installed this

[ratsnapple tea]

Actually, if you'd seen the video, you'd agree it was done in realtime using the then-current alpha software. I urge you to watch it--it's pretty impressive! [apple.com]

Re:Request new file formats

[e2mtt]

There is already a free program that does this... Copernic Desktop Search [copernic.com]. It lets you search PDFs also, and all text files regardless of file extension, and also searches the names and meta info of non-text files. It can run as a toolbar in your Windows taskbar. Quite customizable, and very fast.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[anaesthetica]

You don't have to wait until next year to have this type of application on your Mac actually. Check out Launchbar [obdev.at], Quicksilver [blacktree.com] and Butler [petermaurer.de]. All do exactly what the Google Desktop does, only they are able to search through more types of files and items, and are better integrated with the filesystem. It's nice that Google threw Window's users a bone though. I may use it at work.

Re:I've installed this

[Afrosheen]

Because we all know company demonstrations from CEOs are done in realtime using the current alpha software.

Uh, they are, usually. Didn't you see the keynote from Bill Gates where he's talking up Win98's ability to handle hardware, and he gets a nice fat BSOD. There was much laughter and clapping, as if the audience was saying, yeah now you know how we feel every day. Link here [methodshop.com]

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

It's completely unaware of any Mozilla or Thunderbird hostory/cache/bookmarks.

For that matter, it won't touch anything other than my C:\ drive. COnsidering all my Moz/Thunderbird stuff is on my USB drive on F:/, that's a double Whammy.

Nice idea, but it seriously needs a plugin architecture. For that matter, at least let me tell it to index more than just the C:\ drive.

I give it a 5 out of possible 10.

Re:Sounds like Beagle

[Markusis]

Just another good beagle link:

http://www.beaglewiki.org

It's still in very early stages of development, but already indexes many more files than Google Desktop does, such as media files (mp3, ogg, movies), pictures (jpeg exif data), pdf documents, etc. Plus, beagle has live queries. This means that if you perform a search for 'slashdot' a bunch of things will show up in the results - then someone you're IMing with says the word 'slashdot' and it instantly appears in the results - without researching. It's damned sweet. Beagle aims to be released before Spotlight is released with MacOS X.

Privacy Concerns

[tabdelgawad]

Both the NYT and Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] have frontpage articles on this. From the WPost article:

"Once the Google search technology is installed for free on a personal computer, it will transmit basic data daily about usage patterns. For example, it will tell the company how often Google is being used to search personal computers, how often it is used to search the Web, and how often simultaneous searches are done. Google lets users opt out of sending some usage data, but not all of it.

However, Mayer said the data collected will be aggregated so that the company knows where to focus its efforts on upgrading the search technology. She emphasized that the daily up-loading will not transmit any personal information to Google and said it is typical for major software programs that offer voluntary upgrades and fixes for bugs to capture that sort of information as a matter of routine."

This makes me hesitate to install it on my work PC, even though indexing Outlook is soooo tempting ...

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[shotfeel]

Are there other ways in which Spotlight goes "WAY beyond"

Spotlight indexes music and image files based not only on file name, but on the metadata within the files.

It allows you to save your search results, one method being as "smart folders" that update themselves in real time.

Plug-in archetecture and API support to make it easier for developers to write a plug in allowing Spotlight to index their potentially proprietary file formats.

More control over how results are sorted and presented (at least as far as I can see based on the Google screen shots and descriptions).

Much nicer interface (IMO).

Many others.

uninformed

[ashpool7]

The software was demoed and handed out at WWDC 2004. I installed it and did the exact same thing Steve did and guess what, it worked exactly the same. In fact, if you sign up for ADC select (or, if you went to WWDC), you can download the updated software seed that runs even faster.

The only gullibility that's going on is you thinking Apple is full of lies and deceit just like Microsoft....

google desktop newsgroup

[frieked]

They've also posted a newsgroup where you can go and chat about it: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Google-Desktop -Search [google.com]

doesn't really support firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

from the help center

Web pages which you view in Firefox aren't added to your Desktop Search index, however, so you won't be able to find them with Desktop Search.

We realize that many of our users use Mozilla Firefox as their primary browser, and we may consider adding increased Firefox support in a future version of Desktop Search.

[e-mail]

No PDF? No Tbird?

[surelars]

Nice app. Shame that it does not support the most important document format in my collection (PDF), nor my most essential app (Thunderbird).

I'll wait.

/Lars

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[Tezkah]

Windows users already have Approcket [candylabs.com]. It does the same thing as Launchbar.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[marshall_j]

http://desktop.google.com/support/bin/request.py

Look! They have a specific category on their feedback page for asking to Firefox support.

Why not jump on and ask them to hurry up and support it. They aren't psychic (or maybe they are. gooogle is pretty damn good).

Re:I've installed this

[gsfprez]

The developer's release at that time was the version Jobs used on stage. I know this because my best friend's email address is [e-mail], and works on a fundamental portion of Mac OS X.

I used the same DP version a few days later (the one that was given out to the developers) - and on 80 gigs of data (videos, files, documents, etc) - it worked exactly as steve showed.

i don't know whether to laugh or be scared of someone that has opinions on software that one has not used personally.

Re:The horns of a dilemma...

[Anonymous Coward]

All do exactly what the Google Desktop does, only they are able to search through more types of files and items, and are better integrated with the filesystem.

Er..None of those apps do content indexing. That's what Google Desktop (and Spotlight) does that's really important.

Re:Uhm, no thanks...

[josh3736]

Ah, found it.

The local indices are stored in:
\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Desktop Search\

It has already ate up 100 megs in only 15 minutes of indexing. Yikes.

I've seen a few other comments stating that this utility will only index your C:\ drive, which is false. I don't even have a C:\ drive. It is currently indexing both of my fixed drives. (D: and G:)

Firefox Compatibility

[Owndapan]

It is "partially" compatible with FireFox. Check here [google.com].

Just means it won't save and be able to lookup your previous search results.

Re:Testing.

[duck_oil]

Have a look at this [sillydog.org] for some more information.