First:
Google Desktop Search Launched
By Danny Sullivan, Editor October 14, 2004
Google has released a new Google Desktop Search tool today that allows people to scan their computers for information in the same way they use Google to search the web.
“This is what I think is one of our our more exciting announcements this fall,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer web products. “Our users have been asking for this. They say, ‘Google is great, but why can’t I search my computer the same way?'”
The tool is remarkable for its power yet simplicity. Rather than create a standalone application, Google Desktop Search seamlessly blends into Google itself. Those using the tool see a new “Desktop” link on the Google home page and search results page. Selecting this link brings back results found on their own computers.
In particular, the tool indexes the full text of:
a.. Email within Outlook or Outlook Express (notes, contacts, journal and to do list items are not included, nor are emails in the Deleted Items folder)
b.. Microsoft Word, Excel & PowerPoint files c.. AOL Instant Messenger chats d.. Web pages viewed online in Internet Explorer or any HTML file saved to your computer e.. Plain text files The tool also indexes the text within the file names of image in JPEG or GIF formats, giving it rudimentary image search capabilities. File names of Adobe Acrobat PDF content and names of some other file types are also indexed. Full text indexing of information in these files is NOT done.
Unlike with Gmail or regular Google searches, ads are not shown with desktop search results or content viewed through desktop search.
Using Google Desktop Search Google Desktop Search is only for Windows XP or Windows 2000 users — no news on a Mac version from Google, sorry. Once installed, the application starts indexing information on your computer in the file types it understands. At the moment, only files on your primary hard drive (the C: drive for most people) are indexed. Those on additional hard drives won’t be searchable.
Indexing is fast and only happens when your computer is idle for 30 seconds or longer. Once the index is built, it is continually updated with changes on the fly. Get a new email? Visit a new web page? All this information is automatically recorded and made searchable within seconds.
“Our goal for the application is to have it behave as if you had photographic memory of what’s on your computer,” Mayer said.
How to search? A little swirly Google Desktop Search icon is shown in your Windows taskbar. Double-click on this (or right-click, then choose Search), and an Internet Explorer window will open with the Google home page on it — or at least, what looks like the Google home page.
In reality, you’re getting the Google Desktop Search home page. This is a page hosted on your computer, the home page of a local web server created to dish up what Google Desktop Search has indexed and found.
Do a search on this page, and by default, you’ll search the contents of your desktop. A combined list of everything found will be shown, with little icons indicating if something is a web page, an email and so on. You’ll also be shown a count in the reverse bar under the search box indicating the total matches, the number of email matches, file matches, chat matches and web history matches.
Each count is also a link, and clicking on them will narrow your search to one type of data. In other words, click on the count for emails found, and you’ll be shown only matching email messages.
Phrase searching with quotes and term exclusion using the – sign, as on Google itself, is supported.
Awesome Automatic Caching Any item listed will initially have a “1 cached” link after its file name. Similar to the Google page cache feature, this lets you see a copy of the file as Google has indexed it, without actually opening the file itself. So if you have a spreadsheet file, you see a copy of the spreadsheet without having to open Excel.
Each time you view something, a snapshot of what you’ve seen is created. Did you visit the same web page several times in a month? A copy of the page each time you visited is made. The “1 cached” link will change to reflect the number of copies recorded.
This is a fantastic way to keep a record of exactly what you’ve seen on the web and how you saw it, over time. On many occasions, I’ve wanted to go back and see how a web page may have looked a few days ago, a few weeks ago and so on. Tools like the Internet Archive have sometimes helped, but not always. The new tool Seruku is another solution, but at a small cost.
Now Google Desktop Search makes it easy to painlessly preserve your own archive of what you’ve seen and for free. It becomes, as Gary Price wished for last week, a “TiVO for the web.”
In addition, the cached copies of your local files provides some automatic backup insurance. Make a change to a file, then wish you hadn’t? Visiting your cached copies may help you get back some of what was modified. The data won’t be in the original document format — with spreadsheets, it can especially look weird, but some of what you grab may help.
Google Integration & Search Memory Searching your desktop can be done by opening the special Google Desktop home page, as described above. However, I suspect many people will simply end up searching via the regular Google home page. I’ve certainly been doing that, in my testing so far.
That’s part of the elegance of the tool. Once installed, the Google home page will show a new “Desktop” link. This effectively integrates your desktop into Google itself.
Do a web search, and any matching content from your own computer will be shown above the regular search results, in a OneBox display, similar to how news, product, local and book search results are shown. Any one of these OneBox display may also still appear below any desktop search results.
Should you dislike this integration, you can hide desktop results on a one-time basis by clicking on the small Hide link within the display. Using the Desktop Preferences option, you can also shut integration off permanently.
The integration means you can easily spot any of your own emails or data files that might also match something you seek from across the web. I haven’t found that too helpful so far. But the ability to have relevant web pages you’ve previously viewed be bundled as part of Google web search results is fantastic. Its helps you find new things you want to view plus recover things you’ve seen before.
I’ve written recently that search memory features like this at a9 have gotten me to use that service more. Similar features released recently by Ask Jeeves and Yahoo are also compelling. Overall, I was beginning to seriously dislike Google for not having them.
Now Google’s gained some search memory of its own. a9, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo’s tools are more mature and feature-rich, but Google Desktop Search is a good stopgap for Google. It makes my searches there more personal, more useful and importantly, helps tie me in more to the service. In addition, I get the ability to scan for files and email on my computer.
The integration feels so comfortable that it makes me think desktop search tools from Google’s competitors will have to have similar integration. A desktop search tab may become de rigueur.
From Physical To Virtual Desktop Google Desktop Search is a further move toward what I speculated might happen in my Welcome To The Google Desktop? article back when Gmail was released.
In it, I suggested that Google might cause us to reconsider what we consider to be our desktop. Rather than it being tied to a physical computer, our desktop could go virtual, with files located on Google (or competitors), accessible to use wherever we are.
Google Desktop Search doesn’t physically get us there. Our files still reside on our computers. But metaphorically, those running it now have their desktops moved to Google. There it is — a little link right above the search box. Your desktop, on Google.
Forget the idea of Google as operating system replacement. This isn’t a move that locks you into a particular platform for running programs and applications, as an operating system does. This goes beyond that. It locks you into something more important, your data — and perhaps prepares you for trusting Google (or others) more with that.
Consider that down the line, Google might offer to mirror its searchable copy of your desktop data on its own site. That would be useful. If you’re away from home, recovering all your data would be as easy as getting to a browser and searching on Google. Your desktop could become wherever Google is — or its competitors, if they follow suit.
While Google may seem in the lead on this, others may not be far behind. The Yahoo desktop search product that’s rumored might involve storage of files with Yahoo itself. LookSmart’s Furl service recently expanded web page storage to 5 gigabytes and envisions allowing file storage and searching. Lycos UK last month launched an online drive service for file storage. And Microsoft itself has a long-standing Stuff I’ve Seen research project that could potentially expand this way or be bundled into the desktop tool planned for release later this year.
A Wish List
I’ve been running Google Desktop Search for nearly two days, and already it’s proven itself a keeper to me. Having said this, and bearing in mind it’s still a beta release, I’ve already got a wish list.
Most annoying so far is that you can only see 10 results at a time. Though the tool has a Desktop Preferences option, that doesn’t yet include an option to increase the number of results seen at one time. Google said there’s nothing to announce about potential changes to this yet.
Also missing is an advanced search page. On that, it would be nice to have drop down boxes as with Google itself letting you limit searches to particular file types, phrases or especially date ranges.
For example, getting back a long list of matching emails, then having to use the result page numbers at the bottom of the results list to browse to a particular date is a pain.
You can use some of Google’s search syntax to get around this. To narrow to file type, use the filetype command. For example, this:
cars filetype:email
would bring back only email matches with the word cars mentioned. A list of known file types we’ve tested to date and found work are:
a.. Word: filetype:word or filetype:doc
b.. Excel: filetype:excel or filetype:xls
c.. PowerPoint: filetype:powerpoint or filetype:ppt
d.. Text: filetype:text or filetype:txt
e.. Email: filetype:email
f.. Chat: filetype:chat
g.. Web History/HTML Files: filetype:web or filetype:html
h.. Images: filetype:jpg or filetype:gif
i.. Acrobat: filetype:pdf
j.. Windows Media: filetype:wma or filetype:wmv
k.. MP3: filetype:mp3
For email, chat and web history, you can also narrow by clicking on the count numbers, as described above. As for images, Acrobat and other files, keep in mind that only text in the file names will be matched, not any meta data or actual text contained within the files.
Images, Acrobat, Windows Media and MP3 files are also not officially supported by the product as searchable content. While I did find it capturing some of this content on my computer, the bulk of it was not retrieved. Why some but not all of it was found is unclear, especially given that the index process appeared to have completed OK. But since this isn’t even promised, I can’t complain much.
Google, of course, purchased the Picasa photo indexing solution earlier this year. Perhaps it will be that Google Desktop Search will evolve some integration with that in the future.
Google Toolbar/Deskbar integration would be nice. At the moment, I can use the Google Toolbar to specifically search for just images, news, shopping, the web and so on. But desktop search isn’t an option. Google says this may come for future versions.
A real personal wish is for indexing of content of compressed/zip files. I constantly zip up data — right now, none of that gets indexed by the tool.
I desperately want the search memory features to mature. I want this tool — or some other system — to keep track of what I actually have searched for and track that in association with pages I’ve found. So far, Yahoo’s implementation of these types of features are the best I’ve seen (but those at a9 and Ask Jeeves are great as well).
Finally, password protection and encryption of data compiled by Google Desktop is important. I hope that will be added soon. More on why that’s important and other search privacy issues are covered in the companion to this article: A Closer Look At Privacy And Desktop Search. Google also provides more information about privacy issues in its Privacy Policy and Privacy FAQ.
In Conclusion
Overall, I love the tool. Gary Price, who worked with me closely on this article, loves it as well — and Gary is as cynical than me about new things. Anyone who uses Google will want to install it, if only because it’s so easy to do and will likely improve their web searching experience.
Certain parts need to improve, of course. I have two dedicated email search tools, my long-time favorite NEO and Microsoft’s newly acquired free Lookout. I wouldn’t give either of them up yet, because they can still do somethings better than Google Desktop Search. Nevertheless, Google Desktop has proved more than good enough for many of my queries.
That’s going to be a key thing. For those who have no desktop search at all, this product is a great start down that road. It will be a major improvement for them — and another thing that will tie some closer to Google.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3421651
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REVIEW: Google Desktop 2 Posted Aug 22, 2005, 1:49 PM ET by Brad Hill
Today’s release of Google Desktop 2 is a watershed event for Google, and a momentous shot across Microsoft’s bow (in the desktop ownership arena) and Yahoo!’s bow (in the content aggregation arena). With good reason, much attention is being paid to the Sidebar feature, which has little to do with desktop search, and everything to do with desktop content. No doubt the prominence and importance of the Sidebar is why Google changed the product name from Google Desktop Search to Google Desktop.
As far as searching is concerned, the mechanics are pretty much the same. Google integrates fard drive search with Web search, both in the window that opens in response to double-clicking the Google Desktop icon, and on the google.com page when the user is signed in. A deskbar and a floating deskbar are optionally bundled for remote searching. Initial indexing transpires during idle computer time, then continual indexing proceeds in real time. The same range of filetypes are indexed. The search application does not preview items with the slickness of Yahoo! Desktop Search, but graphic files and cached Web pages are displayed as thumbnails; this is more than Google does with its network-cached Web pages in the main index.
As a massive, multifaceted new feature, the Sidebar is the main focus of this review, continued after the jump.
The Google Desktop Sidebar is a long vertical panel divided into resizable and variously configurable modules. The default modules are:
a.. Email
b.. News
c.. Web Clips (feeds)
d.. Scratch Pad
e.. Photos
f.. Quick View
g.. What’s Hot
h.. Stocks
i.. Weather
The Sidebar is arguably more useful than Google’s home page personalization, but there is room for improvement. (I should emphasize that Google Desktop 2 is a beta product.) An article in the NY Times quotes a Google spokesperson saying that third-party development of the Sidebar is anticipated.
Firefox users rejoice: Sidebar links respect and acquiesce to Firefox tabbing preferences. In my case that means that every click opens a new tab, preserving already opened tab content.
The Sidebar is an aggressive space hog. It doesn’t just remain on top of other windows. It is more aggressive even than the Windows desktop. Sidebar prevents other windows from miximizing across the entire screen; you must minimize the Sidebar to see a full-screen window. When the Sidebar is up, any other window dragged over to it slides beneath. This paragraph is true only when Auto-hide is not engaged. Thanks to Moyzes for pointing that out.
The Email module displays received email headers, any one of which slides out sideways from the Sidebar to reveal the entire message when clicked. The Sidebar found my Thunderbird installation without any action on my part, and added my Gmail archives upon request. Unfortunately, Google Desktop will not index multiple Gmail accounts. Google is probably rather against multiple accounts, but anecdotal evidence indicates they are rampant; certainly this household has multiples.
News
Google Desktop will track your movements through the Web and use the accumulated data to contextually deliver articles supposedly of interest. It is definitely not working well for me yet, but has been running for only half a day. The documentation does not indicate that Google uses any accumulated search history built up; this is because Google Desktop is not locked into a single Google account. But, since it knows my Gmail address, the account name of which has substantial search history built up, I’d like an option to use that history in determining news items in the Sidebar. Anyway, you must agree to Advanced Features in order to receive personalized news items. Clicking any item in the News module extends a panel showing all news items (there are dozens); clicking any item extends yet another panel with a story summary; clicking that link brings up the Web page.
Web Clips
Web Clips are RSS/Atom feeds. Google starts you off with some defaults, which are easily removed. Paste any feed address to receive it. The Sidebar also keeps track of recently viewed pages containing feed links, ad offers to add all the feeds with one click. From there, you can delete unwanted ones. As with News, clicking on a Web Clip item extends a summary; clicking on that header brings up the feed item’s Web page. As an overwhelmed feed user who employs two content-stuffed newsreaders all day, I though this little module would be useless. But I’m already finding it handy to keep track of important feeds I tend to forget, or timely feeds whose additions I want to know about immediately.
Scratch Pad
I love it. Love scratch pads in general. I wish this one could be detached to floating status. The Sidebar automatically remembers anything you type into it; for better organization you can save any pad-in-progress as a text file (default location is the desktop). I used the Scratch Pad to compile notes for this review.
Photos
The Photos module can be assigned any hard drive folder containing images; likewise any online repository of images. A slideshow proceeds in the module with the pace determined by the user. Click on any image to see an extended, larger version. Double-click that image to open your default image software for that filetype.
Quick View
This module keeps track of your movements—both online and in your hard drive—and maintains a list of recently viewed items. It’s a combination auto-bookmark list and Recent Documents list. Activate the star next to any item you want to persist atop the list. You can weight the list toward recent items or frequently used items.
What’s Hot
The most trivial module in my opinion, What’s Hot scans Technorati, del.icio.us, the NY Times Most Frequently Mailed list, and other sources to determine what people are talking about. My experience so far is that the list doesn’t refresh often enough and has no personalization associated with it. There are no options available in this module.
Stocks
Fairly typical for a stock widget, except for the annoying inability to accept groups of additions; you must add ticker symbols one at a time. The double extension system, as in other modules, eventually reveals a chart and basic session data. Clicking the final header displays the Yahoo! Finance page for that symbol.
Weather
The Weather module displays a current-day forecast, and in my testing accepted only two locations—a seemingly nonsensical limitation. Clicking through the extensions lands you on a Google search page for weather your town, instead of weather: your town. The missing colon turns weather from an operator to a mere keyword, and makes the results useless. It’s an unfortunate glitch.
SUMMARY:
The Sidebar is a galvanizing addition to Google Desktop; it’s a robust, attractive, ambitious product that has got to rattle Microsoft as it lurches through its ponderous development cycles. I wish I could maximize windows over the Sidebar; Google is being arrogant and pushy here. But I have not shut it off, and I don’t intend to soon. There is real convenience to be had, and Google Desktop now offers a completely new dimension. It’s not all about search anymore. Google Desktop 2, with the Sidebar, is about organizing and making useful—the original Google mandate. With imrovements presumably to come, this is a winner.
http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000530055481/
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Google Desktop Is in a Class by Itself By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols March 8, 2005
Review: The just-released Google Desktop has improved security features, is a lot more open-source program friendly and boasts time-saving search features.
Let me open my kicking the tires of Google’s new desktop application by saying that I love desktop search programs like a fat man loves doughnuts.
Although, I’m one of those people who file documents and correspondences religiously in directory structures like C:\corr\eweek\2004\manuscripts, I still can’t find what I need when I need it, as quickly as I’d like. Enter Google Inc.’s Google Desktop Search 1.0.
Google’s free desktop search application only came out of beta on Monday with a new release that boasts better security, support for popular open-source programs and an open SDK (software development kit) that enables programmers to add non-supported file types to the program’s search range.
Read more here about the release of Google Desktop Search 1.0.
For me, though, they’ve already taken care of the most important programs by adding support for Adobe Acrobat PDFs; e-mail from Mozilla, Mozilla Thunderbird and Netscape; and recently viewed Web pages from the Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape browsers.
The program already had support for Microsoft Office 2000 and higher applications like Excel, Word and Outlook and for AIM, the AOL Instant Messenger client. Google Desktop also now indexes video, images and audio metadata, such as title and artist.
Unfortunately, it still runs only on Windows. To be precise, you need XP or Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above. You can’t run it on Linux or Mac OS systems. Google may—note, I say may—eventually port it to those platforms.
Installing it is a snap … if you have administrator privileges. Without them, you’ll be unable to install, or for that matter, use the program successfully. Only users who also have administrator privileges can use Google Desktop, so on a typical business PC with multiple users, only managers can access Desktop.
The program will take up a minimum of 500MB of available disk space and requires a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz Pentium processor. The free download itself is only a mere 700KB, so even modem users will have no trouble getting a copy.
That 500MB is a misleading number though. When Google Desktop indexes your files it also creates a cache with copies of your original files. Thus, if, like me, you have hundreds of megabytes of files, you can multiply your total data file storage by two to get an idea how much space Desktop will end up taking over.
In today’s world, where 80GB drives are commonplace, that may not matter much. But if you have an older machine with a smaller drive, Google Desktop might end up giving you an unexpected surprise.
And, indeed, if you think about it, that cache might already pose an unexpected and unpleasant security surprise. Google Desktop not only makes it child’s play for anyone who sits at your PC to read your e-mail, but it also makes it possible for a snoop at your desk to read your e-mail or what-have-you after you’ve deleted it.
Is desktop search the ultimate security hole? Read more here.
By default, Desktop doesn’t delete anything … ever. When you click the link to the “live” version a file that has been deleted, you’ll get an error message. But you can still get to a copy of it, by clicking on its “cached” link.
Google Desktop Is in a Class by Itself
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
March 8, 2005
Review: The just-released Google Desktop has improved security features, is a lot more open-source program friendly and boasts time-saving search features.
Let me open my kicking the tires of Google’s new desktop application by saying that I love desktop search programs like a fat man loves doughnuts.
Although, I’m one of those people who file documents and correspondences religiously in directory structures like C:\corr\eweek\2004\manuscripts, I still can’t find what I need when I need it, as quickly as I’d like. Enter Google Inc.’s Google Desktop Search 1.0.
Google’s free desktop search application only came out of beta on Monday with a new release that boasts better security, support for popular open-source programs and an open SDK (software development kit) that enables programmers to add non-supported file types to the program’s search range.
Read more here about the release of Google Desktop Search 1.0.
For me, though, they’ve already taken care of the most important programs by adding support for Adobe Acrobat PDFs; e-mail from Mozilla, Mozilla Thunderbird and Netscape; and recently viewed Web pages from the Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape browsers.
The program already had support for Microsoft Office 2000 and higher applications like Excel, Word and Outlook and for AIM, the AOL Instant Messenger client. Google Desktop also now indexes video, images and audio metadata, such as title and artist.
Unfortunately, it still runs only on Windows. To be precise, you need XP or Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above. You can’t run it on Linux or Mac OS systems. Google may—note, I say may—eventually port it to those platforms.
Installing it is a snap … if you have administrator privileges. Without them, you’ll be unable to install, or for that matter, use the program successfully. Only users who also have administrator privileges can use Google Desktop, so on a typical business PC with multiple users, only managers can access Desktop.
The program will take up a minimum of 500MB of available disk space and requires a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz Pentium processor. The free download itself is only a mere 700KB, so even modem users will have no trouble getting a copy.
That 500MB is a misleading number though. When Google Desktop indexes your files it also creates a cache with copies of your original files. Thus, if, like me, you have hundreds of megabytes of files, you can multiply your total data file storage by two to get an idea how much space Desktop will end up taking over.
In today’s world, where 80GB drives are commonplace, that may not matter much. But if you have an older machine with a smaller drive, Google Desktop might end up giving you an unexpected surprise.
And, indeed, if you think about it, that cache might already pose an unexpected and unpleasant security surprise. Google Desktop not only makes it child’s play for anyone who sits at your PC to read your e-mail, but it also makes it possible for a snoop at your desk to read your e-mail or what-have-you after you’ve deleted it.
Is desktop search the ultimate security hole? Read more here.
By default, Desktop doesn’t delete anything … ever. When you click the link to the “live” version a file that has been deleted, you’ll get an error message. But you can still get to a copy of it, by clicking on its “cached” link.
If you want to spread the program’s search net even farther than your local PC, you’ll need to do some registry editing. As it is, Google Desktop will search only your local drives and files on network drives that you create while Desktop is running.
Wherever your information is, make no mistake about it, Google Desktop will get it for you in a hurry.
I’m running it on my main Windows desktop system, a Gateway 503GR tower with a 3GHz Pentium IV, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB Serial ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment). I had most of my files drive indexed in the same time it took me to write this story. Yes, that’s a fast machine, but there was also more than 40GB of files, and I was also using the PC for multiple other tasks at the same time.
By including Thunderbird e-mail and Firefox Web pages, my e-mail and browser clients of choice, Google Desktop has made my life a lot easier. In particular, while I like Thunderbird, its sorting and search mechanisms are … well … to be kind, both are sorely in need of improvement.
Even if Thunderbird’s search were better though, it would have a way to go to match Google Desktop’s abilities. For instance, with e-mail, you can search on the Subject, To, From, cc and bcc fields. So, say I wanted to search for all messages from my boss with the subject of promotion. I just enter:
And I’m done.
As someone who gets hundreds of real—not spam—e-mail messages a day, this isn’t just handy, it’s a lifesaver.
As you would expect in a Google product, Google Desktop also includes a full range of search features.
You can search by exact phrase. So a search on “Chicago Cubs,” for instance, would only find references to the baseball team rather than articles about bear cubs at a zoo in Chicago.
You can also use the “not” operator. For instance, the search
“Major League Baseball” –Yankees
would only turn up files with the phrase “major league baseball” with no mention of the Yankees.
In addition, there’s a useful filetype operator. With it, you can make sure that you only search for a particular kind of file. So
Filetype:doc Linux
would turn up Word documents with the word “Linux” rather than e-mail messages or StarOffice documents.
Speaking of StarOffice, by opening up its API, it’s now possible to get Desktop to search for formerly not supported file types. Google does this by using plug-ins that expand Desktop’s search abilities. These are available at its Plug-in page.
I’m currently using three of these new plug-ins: Larry’s Any Text File Indexer, Larry’s Help File Indexer and, the most important from where I sit, Larry’s OpenOffice.org and StarOffice Indexer. They work well, and they’re completely transparent to me as a user.
In addition, Google has already made a few other plug-ins available for programs like the mIRC and Trillian Pro IM (instant messaging) clients. I have no doubt that many more such clients will be coming quickly. Myself, I’d be pleased if someone would come up with plug-ins for the ancient WordStar word processor, the Pegasus Mail e-mail client and the GAIM IM client.
While it’s not to everyone’s taste, I also like Google’s integrated interface. With one search, I have access not only to what I have on my PC, but also to what’s on the Web. No fuss, no muss, no need to learn another program.
Desktop search has, of course, become a very hot field. Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and Ask Jeeves have all entered it. In addition, old hands at the local search game like Copernic Technologies Inc. are launching new programs.
For more on the rush to join the desktop search game, click here.
As competition heats up in this race, you can expect to see improvements in all these programs and Google Desktop. For now, though, Google Desktop is the class of the field.
eWEEK.com Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about operating systems since the late ’80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the way.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1773901,00.asp
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September 01, 2005
Review: Google Desktop 2.0 Beta
Google’s new upgrade to its Desktop application brings a lot more than search to your desktop.
By John Marrin Desktop Pipeline
When Google introduced its Desktop Search application, the software earned high marks for search results, but lagged a bit in features.
Google Desktop’s Sidebar includes a variety of informational sections.
Now the good folks at Google have rolled out a beta version called Google Desktop 2.0. They’ve dropped “Search” from the name and not by mistake — Google Desktop is no longer merely a search and index tool.
In fact, while search is still the centerpiece of the new software, all the flash belongs to the new Sidebar. Whether this new direction that Google has taken is useful to you will depend on your tolerance for desktop clutter.
By default, the Google Sidebar resides on the right hand side of the screen taking up a good chunk of precious real estate and shoving your desktop icons aside. When you click on one of the Sidebar tools, another new window cascades off the side, giving you a more detailed view (but grabbing even more space). However, you can re-size the Sidebar, or set the Sidebar to Auto Hide, making it a lot more practical to keep around.
Tallying The Tools
The default Google Sidebar setup includes nine different sections, all of which can be mixed and matched depending on your needs:
a.. At the top is the Email tool, where you can set up email notification from Gmail or your default e-mail application (although the latter has to be running).
b.. The News tool, according to Google, customizes content based on tracking your reading habits. My experience bore this out — I found a good selection of headlines from Reuters, CNN, and a number of other high-profile news outlets.
c.. Web Clips is the tool for RSS and Atom feeds; just enter your favorite feed URLs, and you’re off to the races.
d.. The What’s Hot tool is a collection of the most popular news stories and other bits from around the Web. It’s hit or miss, but some folks may find it diverting.
e.. The Scratch Pad is a feature you may find useful. Here you can jot down notes that are automatically saved. Frankly, I simply reach for my handy analog notepad, but keyboard junkies may prefer Google’s solution, because it’s always open and it works as a nice alternative to Microsoft’s Notepad.
f.. The Quick View is another shot across Microsoft’s bow. This feature gives you quick access to recent and often-used files and Web pages.
g.. Of course, there’s a Weather window that displays abbreviated reports for today and tomorrow; you can add as many weather locations as you like.
h.. The Stocks tool is simple: You can list any publicly traded stock from the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, NYSE, and S+P 500.
i.. Photos is an automated slideshow that displays a slideshow of images stored locally or from the Web. It’s a nice personalization touch.
j.. And lastly, waaayyyy down at the bottom of the Sidebar, is your desktop search window.
To Google’s credit, you can customize your Sidebar tools, drag them into your preferred order, or turn them off individually (except for the search tool). If you just want the search, you can turn the Sidebar off completely and opt for a simple, small search window that either floats on your desktop or sits in your Windows Taskbar.
In Search Of…
Perhaps the biggest knock against the first version of Google Desktop Search was that it lacked any sorting features, aside from the obtuse “relevance” and somewhat more useful “date.” Thankfully, the new version takes care of that by sorting results by type. For instance, when I searched on the name “Jane,” I pulled up 126 e-mails, 111 files, 13 cached Web files and five “other” files (that were, in this case, all contacts).
Once you’ve gotten search results returned, a dropdown menu lets you sort on a fairly long list that includes the standard text and html files but also includes video, graphics, and music types. You can even pre-sort your results manually by typing in the file type you want to narrow on in the search box. For instance, entering “jane filetype:doc” will display only Word documents with Jane in the text or title. The improved sorting, while a simple feature, makes Google’s desktop searches many times more useful than it was only months ago.
If you need to narrow down your initial results, you can click on any of the result. You can also sort e-mails by Sender and Recipient. In general, I found searches to be just as fast, if not faster, than other desktop search tools.
A Stable Beta
The word “beta” has come to mean different things to different software vendors. Judging from this release, Google defines “beta” as “it’s pretty much finished, but we don’t want to commit ourselves to saying this is final.” This particular beta seems to be very solid. Installation went without a hitch, and it indexed my hard drive’s contents perhaps a bit faster than the previous version, even though the software only indexes during inactive periods so as not to slow down other tasks you’re performing. I didn’t find any bugs or hiccups during my test run.
For business users, there is an Enterprise version of Google Desktop with centralized configuration and installation. This more corporate version also tweaks security with search and index encryption.
In my review of Google Desktop Search 1.0, I mentioned that there was open encouragement of third-party plug-in development. A recent glance at the developers’ page revealed over 50 plug-ins, with about a dozen of those launched in August. Most are for the search function, but there are five for the new Sidebar, including an iTunes player and a simple to-do list.
Is Google Desktop 2.0 worth installing? Well, as with most Google applets, your mileage will vary. The search’s new sorting features have made it a lot more comparable to Yahoo! Desktop or Copernic. And while the Sidebar tool doesn’t really do anything “new” — there have been Sidebar-like applications around for years — it brings together a group of useful info tools under one smartly-designed and customizable interface. All of which merit at least an experimental download.
————————————————————————– Google Desktop 2.0 Beta Google, Inc. desktop.google.com Price: Free
Summary: Google’s new Desktop applet brings much more than search to the table, and does it in a flexible and interesting way.
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