Google intros desktop search tool

 

Gallery

By Steve Malone

Posted on 14 Oct 2004 at 16:24

The long-rumoured Google desktop search is now available for download from desktop.google.com. The new beta application allows users to index and search their emails, documents, Web history and instant messenger chats.

Based on the same technology as Google Web search, the Desktop Search tool can search across a range of popular applications: Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. It can also search text, Internet Explorer's History file and saved AOL Instant Messenger chats.

A search phrase can be used to search both the Web or the desktop simultaneously with the results appearing together in a single listing on the Google.com search results page. Anxious not to repeat the uproar that met the launch of its Gmail service, Google says that the computer's content is not accessible by its servers but operates entirely locally. As an added level of security, users can choose not to add certain files and websites to the search index.

Google Desktop Search requires a one-time indexing of the computer's hard disk which can take place when the machine is otherwise idle. Once done, Desktop Search updates itself on the fly for most file types. For example, new emails are indexed and are available found within seconds.

Although widely expected, the launch of Google's Desktop Search will come as an embarrassment to Microsoft who has had to shelve its own desktop search tool originally slated for release with Longhorn. The delays in Longhorn have meant that the Microsoft desktop search has been put back until after the launch of the next version of the Windows operating system in 2006.

Google desktop search is available for Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above. It requires a minimum of 128MB of RAM, and a 400MHz (or faster) Pentium processor is recommended.

The technology also has parallels with the forthcoming Spotlight feature that will be in Mac OS X 10.4, although Tiger's version is more comprehensive - it searches everything. Of course Apple, unlike Google, has the advantage of being able to integrate the search tools at system level.