Google Officially Drills Down to the Desktop

[ConcernedCanuk]

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March 7, 2005
Google Officially Drills Down to the Desktop

After months of testing and tweaking, Google formally launched its desktop search tool in order to help users find a variety of information on their PCs.

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The free downloadable tool also works with non-Microsoft browsers (Firefox, Netscape) and e-mail programs (Thunderbird and Netscape) and supports Chinese and Korean language interfaces.

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Google Desktop Search indexes content created by the desktop computer or accessed by the browser whenever the computer is idle for 30 seconds or longer. The advantage is that files are available for search soon after they're created, Google says.

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The product is available for Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above. It requires 500MB of disk space, a minimum of 128MB of RAM, and a400MHz (or faster) Pentium processor is recommended.



Damm

Was all excited there for awhile.

guess my 233MMX in a P1 on Win 98SE puts me out of the market - and I can't really spare half a gig of space anyhoo -

(sigh)

[Melodybe]

1. Is it filtered? Google likes to forget important links sometimes

This makes me wonder...

[americanstranger]

2. 'Requires 500MB of drive space?'

Screw that.

-as

[Zynx]

3. 500 MB? That's a big hunk of spyware.

And why the hell would someone need this? Another numbskull nation gadget.

[merwin]

8. Uh, yeah 500mb. It indexes your hard drive so you can search it.

You can't expect the indexing to be small. 500mb is the upper end though. It shouldn't take that much. I find this a very useful tool for finding e-mails in Outlook. It searches all my e-mail in about 1 second, compared to the 20 minutes it would take for outlook to do the same search.

[liveoaktx]

4. Is this the search tool that has the infamous AutoLink feature?

which adds links to your page when someone views it?

http://news.com.com/Google+toolbar+move+raises+online+ire/2100-1032_3-5582792.html

Blogcast trashing it
http://www.betterbadnews.com/22

[ogradda]

5. what is the purpose?

what's it for?

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. Follow the links to answer your questions!

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First of all, the download is only 700K, about a 2 minute download on dial-up.

Disk space is needed for the indexing, snapshots and caching

There are FAQ pages also

hit the "downloadable tool" link in the original post -

it'll answer most of your questions, and give more info

[bdot]

7. If it's like the normal Google search engine...

then it will take months for it to find what you are looking for. Stupid search engine very rarely updates. I always use Yahoo for everything but the newsgroup searches.

What's its use anyway? Never heard of <ctrl> 'f'?

[Old and In the Way]

9. I love it.

Searching files is something I do a lot. I've got 40 gigs of data I use with up to 10 levels of folders. The MS search function sucks. This is lightening fast. If you are constantly looking for information on your hard drive, I strongly recommend it.

[psychopomp]

10. Gotta agree on the MS search function

It takes too long! Admittedly, I have ~200 gigs of HD space for it to search but it should be able to find files much faster than it does. I might give this Google tool a try. Thanks for the tip.

[ConcernedCanuk]

11. I DO do alot of searching - yes - using the MS thingie

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Is there such a program available for an old dinosaur like my P1 with W98?

Searching for text in a particular document can take half an hour or more, and pretty well bogs down this poor ole thing while it's at it.

I woulda tried this Google program except for the W9x exclusions, as I find the 233MMX pretty robust, all things considered - and DO have 128M RAM

And HD space I can make . . .

[dbt]

12. It's TINFOIL TIME!

To whom does this thing report its "findings?"

:evilgrin:

[Neshanic]

13. Just FedEX your hard drive to them. Let's not make it so difficult.

Then you can access your info from them directly, since they will own your computer after two future "program upgrades".

I will stick with the evil I know, Outlook, and take my chances.

[FlashHarry]

14. Of course, if you want no-spy, integrated search....

...you need to wait for Apple's OSX "Tiger" release this summer. Should be very, very cool.

Oh, and no spyware, no adware, no viruses (yet), and virtually no crashes.

[Atman]

15. I guess you should keep your porn on a separate HD!

I can just see the kids searching for "doggie" and getting all sorts of amazing results!

[Socialistdem]

16. Can someone explain to me in simple english....?

Why would I need this thing taking up system resources when I can just click on

START, SEARCH

any time I want to find something on my PC?

[RawMaterials]

17. I guess you could use the same argument as to why you would

use firefox.


" Why would I need this thing taking up system resources when I can just click on " the IE icon.


um because its a better program then the one Microsoft forced you to use by giving it to you when you bought your computer.