Audio & Video
Business Center
Cameras
Cell Phones & PDAs
Desktop PCs
Gadgets
Gaming
HDTV
Laptops
Macs & iPods
Monitors
Printers
Software
Spyware & Security
Storage
Upgrading
Windows Vista & XP
Resource Centers
Asus Notebook Center
Intel Technology Center
CDW Solution Center
Lenovo Laptop Showcase
Try It Free
White Paper Library
Webcast Library
Most Popular Products
Most Popular Downloads
Sunday, October 17, 2004 5:16 PM PT Posted by Harry McCracken
Google's Desktop Search: First Impressions
It's bizarre when you think about it: At the moment, it's easier for most PC users to find information in the billions of pages that make up the Web than it is to find it on their own hard drives. That's because Windows' built-in search tools are so crude, and Google is so good. But with Google's new Desktop Search utility, help is at hand--because you can now use Google to search your drive.No, Google isn't the first company to come up with a fast and effective disk search tool. In fact, our current issue has Dennis O'Reilly's review of a bunch of such utilities. But the existing programs haven't been all that widely adopted, most aren't free (Dennis's favorite costs $199), and none has the advantage of integrating into the search engine that's nearly synonymous with searching.
Install Google Desktop Search and let it index your drive, and when you go to Google, you'll get an extra item (along with Web, Images, Groups, etc.) called Desktop. Use it, and Google finds text inside the documents on your drive, including Microsoft Office files, AOL IM chat sessions, cached Web pages, Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail, and more.
It's a completely Googlesque search experience, which means it's fast, uncluttered, and accurate. And because Desktop's just another kind of Google search, you can quickly hop between results on your own system and ones on the Web, in newsgroups, and in other Google repositories.
Desktop Search is in beta (if it's like other Google betas, it may last for years), and while it's extremely cool, it's not perfect. For one thing, it can't index every type of file--for instance, it doesn't handle the e-mail program we use here at PC World, Lotus Notes. (Too bad--Notes' built-in search tools are nearly as annoying as Windows'.)
At the moment, at least, it's also short on advanced features. For example, it doesn't let you limit results to files created within a certain date range. (Even Windows search does that.)
Then there's something my colleague Tom Spring has blogged about: This utility is so good that it finds stuff you might not want found, such as e-mails and chat transcripts. I buy the notion that this is basically a feature, not a bug--but it does seem like Google could squash most privacy concerns with some password protection and other features that would let you limit use of Desktop Search and prevent anyone from overriding your settings to peer into private files.
Speaking of privacy, Google's similarly clever GMail service got some flack because it displays ads based on words it finds in your messages. At the moment, at least, Desktop Search isn't doing that--pages of results don't have ads on them at all.
Desktop Search may not change everything, but it's slick, innovative, and free-just like almost everything Google does. If Windows Search has ever driven you crazy, you need to give this a try. (It's available at desktop.google.com.)
Archives
View posts from:
PC World's Marketplace
PC World's Free Whitepapers
QUICK LINKS:
cheap laptops
cell phones
laser printers
HDTV reviews
LCD TV Plasmas
digital cameras
laptop reviews
security antivirus
windows vista reviews
digital camera reviews
inexpensive desktop
LCD wide screen monitors
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
I'm not trying to be a nearsighted OS zealot or anything, but Linux has had the ability to index your hard drive for a while. Why is it such big news when Windows gets the same thing?
Yep, I know that Linux does drive searching, as does Mac OS X. And as I said, so does Windows--it's that it's not very good. And so a nifty free search utility for Windows users is reasonably big news.
-- Harry
Good commentary. I think the best comparison to make for Google Desktop is with the search function in Windows XP, rather than with other third-party tools.
In which case, Google Desktop is definitely a winner - it knocks the socks of Windows search.
Unfortunate that it doesn't search PDF files, but I suppose Acrobat's internal search is so good it hardly seems necessary (although it would be nice to have that centralized).
I wonder if being able to pick which folders are indexed would help answer some privacy questions? The tool seems nice, but the hard drive space requirements (and for what size drive is this - what's the ratio for filled space to index space?), combined with the inability to only search within particular folders, is going to keep this search of my computer...
No where does it mention anything about security. The search results do appear in the IE. Does it open up my computer to attack since Windows' vulnerability is so infamous.
If the shortcut u entered ass a "fasvorite" in Firefox, the results will display just fine, and aleviating some of the security concerns inherent to ie...
Just like Gmail, Desktop Search is good.
Maybe, Google will release its Google Browser.
We all like Google. We're all Googlers.
Enter the era of the Google Supremacy!
If you enter the Google "desktop search" as a shortcut "favorite" in Firefox, the results will display just fine, and alleviating some of the security concerns inherent to "ie"...
search...mail......desktop serach.........maybe browser............Microsoft look out.......here comes GOOGLE
They certainly have a winner at hand. And UI is excellent in that, its very clean and uncluttered and does whats come to be expected of Goolge.
GBrwoser is what most of us waiting for...Good job once again guys!
We're dealing with half the answer here people. Nobody has got it right yet.
Read the article here...
http://www.pixolut.com/blog/index.htm
Lookout is a search tool designed for Outlook, but it can also search files on your PC. I think it is as fast as Desktop Search and probably more effective and flexible - more customization options.
http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/download.html
Google Desktop Search was a huge disappointment given what I've come to expect from Google. It left no less than one-third of my files un-indexed? Why? It supports only Microsoft products almost exclusively. Open Office user? Forget it. To GDS, it's files don't exist. If a file doesn't have a Microsoft suffix (e.g., .doc), it will never be indexed or found. A far better choice is Copernic's Desktop Search application. Many times better than GDS. Faster and customizable. Far superior, in fact.