Google Kills Desktop Search and Gadgets 138
CWmike writes with an article in Computerworld about Google axing yet another product. From the article:"Google has decided to retire Desktop, an application it first launched in 2004 that is designed to let people search for files and data stored in their computers' hard drives. It was one of the first products Google aimed against Microsoft and was intended to improve upon the native search functionality found in Windows. Desktop search became an area of competition, as Microsoft responded to the challenge and others such as Yahoo launched their own products. However, Google has decided that, with the popularity of cloud computing and users' increasing comfort with Web apps, the time has come to decommission Desktop, it said in a recent blog post. As of September 14, Google will also end support for Desktop APIs, services, plug-ins and gadgets."
From the looks of it the announcement implies that Google Gadgets are getting the axe too, which a few more people might be using.
Time to decommission desktop? (Score:1, Insightful)
Google has decided that, with the popularity of cloud computing and users' increasing comfort with Web apps, the time has come to decommission Desktop
I really don't like this development. Web apps tend to be really buggy and never really work as required. Either the feel is slow, you accidentally click somewhere or do something that loses all your work and most of the just doesn't feel as good as desktop app. I can't see anyone serious moving from Microsoft Office to Google's web-based offerings. Imagine if you had to do all your real development and coding within some web application. The same goes for games. I rather play real good games than some Farm
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This is more accurate IMO. Have had tons of problems with Office at work, especially trying to collaborate on documents (can only use Excel, not Word, can
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And the great thing about web apps, at least Google's, is that they do autosaves so your data is safe.
Yes, because autosave hasn't been available since at least Office 97. Oh, wait...
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"Google is destroying computers."
Not mine.
"Imagine if you had to do all your real development and coding within some web application."
Why? I don't nor will I ever.
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Did you ever use Google Desktop? (Score:1)
Seriously, Google Desktop sucks. It slows your whole machine down to provide a service that the Windows XP search has provided for some time. And since it used to be bundled with all of Google's other offerings, it was unnecessarily ubiquitous. It is one of those things that I always clean off of a machine first when users complain that it is slowing down...
Re:Time to decommission desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't be the only person to think that the real reason is that the built in search features on Windows 7 (and Vista for that matter) are actually pretty good. I personally haven't felt the need to go grab a desktop search tool for windows since indexed searching was baked into the OS.
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Yup. I think the Windows 7 one is superior to Vista in terms of recall speed as well, though I've never compared it to third-party desktop indexing software.
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I've been using them exclusively as my office apps for almost a year now and I've grown rather fond of them. The subset of features they offer fits my needs quite well.
I've recently started automating some of the more repetitive things I do with their scripting interfaces and am pretty happy with the results.
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I am especially enthusiastic about the discipline imposed by my GoogleDocs size limit of 1 Mb.
So novel and revolutionary!
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The limit is 1 MB, not 1 Mb. That makes a big difference.
512,000 characters is enough for a couple hundred pages of text. I've never had to write something that long but if I did, I would probably use a text editor rather than a word processor.
Office documents are typically very short and simple and it's this usage that Google is targeting. It isn't for you.
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It won't import Word .doc or .docx, larger that 1MB in the source file.
How many .doc files do you have, greater than 1MB?
Google Office in the real world? Useless turd.
Get yourself over to zoho.com, and see how it SHOULD be done!
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I've never had to import a Word document into Google, so I haven't experienced the problem. I suppose if I ever do run into a serious limitation with Google Docs, I would give something like zoho a try.
I have no interest in going back to running Office applications locally.
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I could not do any meaningful work with google web apps.
Doubtful.
More likely "would not" or "will not."
Re:Time to decommission desktop? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Super complex spreadsheets... really just shouldn't exist.
Yes, it makes you wonder why people bother with them at all doesn't it? Nothing you can't do with a pencil, paper and calculator, after all.
Twat.
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It's what I call the "Professor Complex," where somebody thinks that instead of providing knowledge or insight, they try to challenge the other person to a pop quiz.
I can guarantee this, when I'm collaborating on a google apps spreadsheet I can just use the API and do things from a Ruby IRB console that are in fact very simple. My understanding is that many of those things would be complicated interacting with a spreadsheet through a modern GUI interface. I can't say for sure, because I only do very simple
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If you can't figure out what it's for from the online documents, why should somebody "tell [you]?" It isn't going to be different information.
Your theory is that Google Apps is useless and nobody really uses it? Really? Please, allow to me to roflmfao!
You really think that a "business plan" is too complex? Or a "complicated financial spreadsheet?" Raaaaaaaally? You raaaaaaaaly think that? Or, you didn't check?
As far as API stuff goes, the really funny part is that the only thing that would make a spreadshe
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I hate Word. Excel I'm okay with, but when it comes down to doing something moderately complicated, I'm more likely to throw Mathematica/Maple or MATLAB at the problem. That said, there are what should be simple things that I've struggled to do in GoogleDocs that I actually was able to manage in Word. And Word is really a pretty crappy program (particularly if you do any technical docs). Try doing something as simple as an outline in either of them when the outline format doesn't fit any of their pre-canned
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1) www.dropbox.com - Replicate a folder to the DropBox cloud.
2) www.Office365.com - Office 2010 in the cloud (yes, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in a browser) with lots of awesome features. For example, get a live.com account with Mesh and you can use it interchangeably with the documents on your PC. Mesh works a lot like DropBox. It also has SharePoint like features where you can open documents that are host
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At least for me, being out of 3G coverage or my broadband going down are a damn sight more frequent than hard drive failures.
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... apps tend to be really buggy and never really work as required. Either the feel is slow, you accidentally click somewhere or do something that loses all your work ...
just like windows apps...
That that doesn't make sense, but you really believe that only apps on the Windows platform are buggy and never really work as required or slow or you can accidently lose your work then it's just sad that you posted it in a pseudo-tech forum.
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... apps tend to be really buggy and never really work as required. Either the feel is slow, you accidentally click somewhere or do something that loses all your work ...
just like windows apps...
That that doesn't make sense, but you really believe that only apps on the Windows platform are buggy and never really work as required or slow or you can accidently lose your work then it's just sad that you posted it in a pseudo-tech forum.
But where else are people supposed to share their pseudo-informed opinions?
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That that doesn't make sense, but you really believe that only apps on the Windows platform are buggy and never really work as required or slow or you can accidently lose your work then it's just sad that you posted it in a pseudo-tech forum.
"only", no. "about the same as", sure, although I'd place google apps in the lead.
If google really wants to compete with MS for office software supremacy, they are gonna have to change their user interface completely every couple years, while claiming no one can change to openoffice because its too different. From memory, google apps pretty much look and work the same as they did when they rolled out, so they're falling way behind in the critical "creates user frustration" metric/checkbox.
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From memory, google apps pretty much look and work the same as they did when they rolled out
Indeed, just like the WordPad and Notepad programs you get with Windows have hardly changed at all in the last fifteen years.
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... apps tend to be really buggy and never really work as required. Either the feel is slow, you accidentally click somewhere or do something that loses all your work ...
just like windows apps...
How do awful posts like this make it to +3? You didn't even bother with capitalization.
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dup (Score:5, Informative)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/09/03/1611214/Google-To-Shut-Down-10-Products
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Didn't take long for the dupmasters to take over again, eh?
Re:dup (Score:5, Funny)
Taco would never have allowed these dupes to happen.
CMDRTACO NEVER FORGET.
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CmdrTaco's tears can cure memory loss, unfortunately he never cries.
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It's not really a dup because the original had accurate information, and this one has wild and inaccurate speculation about Gadgets.
Of course in the actual announcement it is clear that it is the gadgets for google desktop that are going away. The more normal use of gadgets, which is for web sites, is not endangered.
So it's half dup, half FUD.
Too bad (Score:1)
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(pause) He got better?
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It turned you INTO google apps?! You should see a doctor!
See? This is proof that Google was justified in "killing" this app.
I'd say he was lucky the Gov't didn't decide to cover this one up. This kind of thing never turns out well for zombies. I can't image that apps would fair any better.
Something Microsoft does well (Score:2)
During that heyday of competing desktop search products, I tried all that I could find.
I ended up settling on MS Desktop Search. It didn't seem to get in the way, searches were decent. To this day, it just runs on my work machines and comes in handy from time to time.
It's a very useful product when needed but not very sexy. I didn't RTA, but I presume Google got bored and couldn't monetize their version.
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Is Google getting jealous of HP?
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Google doesn't actually want [blogspot.com] "Google" to be a verb.
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That's just how the trademark lawyers feel.
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Let people start saying "Let me Bing that for you" on a regular basis and they'll stop complaining about it
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Good one! I'm sure one of the young geeks there suggested it but was shut down by the stuffed shirts.
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For those that didn't read the link, google's lawyers claim that the marketing folks find it "thrilling."
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Yeah, Google couldn't monetize desktop search.
You do realise that every time you use(d) Google desktop search, it phoned home the results and updated your user profile at Google Central, which was then sold on to advertisers, as well as being copied to the relevant intelligence agecies if it contained any suspect words?
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I thought google desktop search was narrowly better at finding things than what comes with windows now, but it was also more intrusive. Which is surprising. Since Windows 7 has indexed search and gadgets, there's no reason for either of these things to exist on Windows. The death of google gadgets on personalized google is a little more surprising.
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I've tried most of the indexing utilities for Windows, and Everything [voidtools.com] is the one I ended up choosing.
It builds its index in seconds, and searches in realtime. It does not search inside files, though, but usually I know the filename.
It never worked quite right... (Score:1)
AAARGH! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd like to have Google's desktop search at work, but as it's Not Invented Here, it's considered a Security Risk.
Pretty sure the CIO owns an assload of MSFT, as well.
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Actually, it can. The problem is that Google's default model ships the data up to its server farm to be indexed. Having our whole server shipped up to their server, encrypted or not, gave our IT security guys a hernia.
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I also found google desktop search to be way faster than windows search and it was superior to searching emails than Outlook (what a slow, bloated application that is - everyone who hates on Lotus Notes must not be using Exchange/Outlook). Maybe the search in Windows 7 is finally up to par, but not in XP or Vista by a long shot.
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FTFY (Score:2)
Re:AAARGH! (Score:4, Insightful)
How about a more realistic comparison between an internal SATA drive at around 50 MBps to a fast cable download of around 50 Mbps.
I have a 50Mbps broadband service, and to suggest that it is even in the same league as a local hard drive is complete nonsense.
Your hard drive actually delivers 50MB/s uninterrupted. For your internet service to deliver you 50Mbps they actually need the source to be able to send it to you at that rate reliably.
Even with 50Mbps, you tube still stutters and buffers on a bad day.... despite the content usually being less than 1Mbps.
Unless your remote hard drive is in your ISPs data center, the comparison is absurd. The internet will be slower, often much slower, and routinely inconsistent.
Then, the cable is only 8 times slower, and is fast enough for most tasks.
Even assuming it was simply 1/8th the speed. A file copy that takes 7.5 seconds locally... takes full minute to the cloud. If it takes 7.5 minutes locally... there goes an hour.
50Mbps... A 3.2GB Quantum fireball hard drive from 1996 does nearly 80Mbps. To get down to 50 we have to go back to when hard drives were measured in megabytes, Windows 3.11 was shiny, and most of us ran DOS and had a 386 or 486 CPU.
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It isn't the raw speed that is the problem, it is latency. Try using Google Docs on a slow line. It tries hard to make it seem like a local app through heavy use of Javascript, but even so it isn't as responsive as Excel running on your local PC.
On the other hand OneNote by default creates web based notebooks stored on your Live account. You get the responsiveness of a local app with the slower network updates completely hidden in the background. Google is trying to get similar performance by improving Java
No ad £££ (Score:2)
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They could bundle it with a webcam, so that they can, you know, just see what's missing in your life and send you a few suggestions.
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Cloud != No More Desktop (Score:2)
You'd think Google would combine Desktop + Cloud search in their Desktop Search offering to provide seamless Cloud integration and use of Cloud as an online file backup.
It appears Google would disagree.
Cloud or nothing then!
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But then you wouldn't be driven to the cloud. They've got an ROI to maintain.
Bait & switch... (Score:1)
... definitely a Google favourite these days.
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Back to Konfabulator (Score:2)
That's still working, right?
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Just like will happen with your cloud (Score:1)
Here today, gone tomorrow..
Windows Search still sucks (Score:2)
ya, but windows search still sucks badly.
thank god for everything (http://www.voidtools.com/)
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These bastards. [voidtools.com]
Desktop search... (Score:2)
.. didn't go far enough. Why don't these companies actually try to develop full featured file management tool. I think there is a lot of cool apps that individual users could use if only a big company would throw its money behind it.
1) Automatically sorting and tagging files /w suggestions of other software you might try/like, etc.
2) Automatically finding valid duplicate files (i.e. by valid, not system files or important files)
3) Keeping track of software and software like it
There's tonnes of stuff they
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-Konstantin
too much porn on my computer to use Google Desktop (Score:1)
I don't want every search to list my porn files as the first item.
Gadgets on Linux... (Score:1)
GoogleLabs (Score:2)
Fast Flip
Aardvark
Google Sets
City Tours
Places Directory
Image Swirl
Google News Timeline
App Inventor for Android (possibly open sourcing?)
Google Squared
Google Talk Guru
Script Converter (replaced)
Realtime Mytracks
Sputnik
This sucks, I've always liked the little projects they have going on there. It sounds like they have some other things cooking though, and I'm happy to see them open sourc
Sad to See it Go, Very Useful (Score:2)
Google Desktop has really helped hunt through a decade of docs when I need to do it. I know Microsoft released a desktop search but I use Google Desktop for the same reasons I don't use Bing for Internet search... I like Google's search better.
Sad to see it go, but thanks Google for releasing it. I hope it will still be available and just closed to new development.
The Real Reason (Score:2)
Why would Google put effort into a search product that doesn't allow them access to your data for targeted advertising?
Sorry to see Google killing Desktop Search (Score:2)
NOO!!! Please say no!!!! (Score:2)
You can pry my Google Desktop out of my cold dead hands!
I don't think Outlook search compares, nor do I think Microsoft's indexing compares. It's just not as comparable, in my opinion.
History (Score:2)
Fail (Score:2)
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Forced? You're aware you can disable indexing completely, right?
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try everything http://www.voidtools.com/ [voidtools.com]
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Mod parent up.
Everything is a great windows app. Been using it for almost a year.
Closed source, but it is FAST!
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Have you tried turning indexing off and seeing how much you like it then? As far as I'm concerned Windows 7 doesn't have a search feature.
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Have you tried turning indexing off and seeing how much you like it then? As far as I'm concerned Windows 7 doesn't have a search feature.
You mean to tell me that when I tell it to stop doing its job, it doesn't produce correct results?
I never would have guessed!
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"Gawd help us all in a couple of years when we're all just good little consumers."
Nah. Just another market cycle. I'm not opting in to this one and therefore don't give a fuck.
alternates? (Score:2)
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Even though the article said "Google Gadgets", it actually links to Google Desktop Gadgets [google.com], not actually Google Gadgets [google.com].
One is web-like type apps running on your desktop. The other is desktop-like apps running on your webpage. A bit of confusion here is to be expected.