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Google Experiments With Local Filesystem Search
Teoti writes "No, Puffin is not the next name of your favorite email client, but, according to the New York Times (NSA reg. req.), the project codename for a new Google search application coming directly into your desktop, that will let you search your local filesystem efficiently. This is different from, but complementary of, the Google DeskBar that already lets you search the Web. The article also gives a few words on the end of the stand alone browser in Longhorn."
I certainly hope this isn't a Windows-only thing.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Will Google's search application functions feature Clippy? Or that damned animated XP Dog?
...exactly what "local filesystem image search" will return.
Finally, a way to effectively search through my gigabytes of pr0n!
FS searching has absolutely sucked until this. Find By Content from Apple was a step forward, but it never worked too well. Here's hoping this search will make it into OS X!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Google will also be able to catalogue the contents of your refrigerator, medicine cabinet, and be able to tell you your car keys are between the couch cushions.
Click here for CNET version.
Hmmm.
Wonder whether they'll start serving me ads based on my hard drive contents...
So, will I get ads based on my data?
is it me or has google decided to go off on many different dirrections recently. I know they have been growing very strongly, but are they going to reach a point where they stretch their resources too thin?
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
I recently searched several hundred thousand files on my work machine. It took nearly 90 minutes to complete the search. I expect Google will be able to significantly improve upon that. They're one of the few companies that I really trust to do the right thing.
X1 seems to be the most popular one out there.
DiskMeta, they had this project in beta for a while, the Windows product went into relese just last week, the site says
DT Search, I remember their ads in bunch of computer magazines, although have never used them myself.
EFS, found it on download.com, supports MS Office and PDF as well as other formats.
No-Reg Link
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
No
Maybe that's why it's not "Find" anymore. "Find" was evidently too positive a term. Now you only have the ability to "Search".
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
If you have followed Microsoft developments around Longhorn you might have noticed that search is one of the top priority features that microsoft is going to integrate directly into the operating system. So once Longhorn is released Microsoft would become the biggest competitor to Google's search applications on the web as well the desktop(with this application)
Search is the next big thing on which a lot of players are concentrating and Microsoft entering the field has skewed the competition towards the desktop and everyone including Google is preparing for the battle.
The company who puts a cookie on your computer that doesn't expire until 2038, has the ability to see lots of personal information about you, and who is interested in storing and indexing all of your email correspondance until the end of time, now wants to index my hard drive for me?
Call me paranoid, and mod me down because I'm sharing a negative opinion of Google, but I don't think I'm going to be giving this same company the ability to sift through my entire hard drive.
Seems to be like a rehash of the AltaVista Desktop search ...
:-)
I keep looking at Google and thinking "wow, this is just like AltaVista, without the death spiral!"
It works a lot better when you enable indexing.
Or so I'm told. My personal experiences with allowing the Windows Indexing service to run in the background have been that it's more trouble than its worth. Yes, on the rare occasion that it's actually -not- indexing when I search, the search is blazingly fast (compared to a non-indexed search).
But if the index is currently being modified, then the Windows search feature can't use it. Period. So when you search, you get the text "Windows is currently building an index of the files on drive C:" and it falls back to the regular, non-indexed search. In addition, the indexer consumes massive amounts of RAM while indexing, so a search run when the index is being modified ends up being about two times slower than usual.
It also doesn't seem to be able to tell when the user is idle. No amount of tweaking seems to fix this, without leaving you with a days-old index. If the index is complete, but you've saved a file since it was completed, that file will not show up in the search at all. I've had it kick on while in the middle of working on something else so often that I finally just turned it off entirely and have resigned myself to slow(er) searches in Windows.
In the interest of fairness I will say that the search seems to work quite well when searching a remote server that is running the indexing service. But running it locally is just a pain.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Well, first this idea is part of Microsoft's WinFS plans. The idea with WinFS was partially born when Microsoft developers realized that major parts of the web can be searched faster than a user's hard drive. It will be interesting to see how this application will collide with Microsoft's plans, that's for sure. It's basically fast searches and enhanced metadata support that are the key parts of WinFS, which is in turn a key part of Longhorn.
Second, an indexing software that does the same thing is already available today and worked very well when I tried it out. It's actually almost perfect, except for the fact that it causes occasional hard drive thrashing as it tries to keep the index up-to-date. This is unfortunately a rather major downside, but if you can bear with this, you'll get literally instant file searches on your entire hard drive -- it narrows down the possible matches as you type each letter. It even indexes file contents for small files. I'm talking about X1.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Google should ask Microsoft for information it has to provide according to the antitrust settlement so that Google's own program can interoperate with Windows as good as Microsoft's!
Now, when Google can tell me where I put my keys, then I'll be impressed.
As a developer trapped in windows I find this little tool incredibly usefull.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
(Warning: lack of cynicism ahead)
Seeing as they've built an empire on goodwill, a high-quality free search service, and word-of-mouth name recognition, I'm tempted to guess that their big benefit is continued goodwill and good karma from their userbase.
Yes, this is a novel concept in a business world where most companies look at customers and see numbers. Thing is, it's goodwill and a user-centric business plan have made Google the great company it is.
It could be that the 'catch' you're looking for is that Puffin will further solidify their already strong user relationship.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Since Microsoft considers Google a major competitor and has its target set on Google with Longhorn's capabilities, I think it would be a great idea if Google started distributing their own version of the Mozilla web browser. With Google's reputation, there would definitely be more people making the switch to Mozilla based browsers if Google were to do this. After all, Netscape is considered a failure now by the public and Mozilla to a casual observer lacks credibility no matter how great the product is.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Perhaps Google can fill this void in the pathetic Windows power tool-set ("Windows power tool-set" being close to an oxymoron).
But, despite my love for Google, in these more Orwellian times, I'm glad that I have the tools (not from MS) to monitor port activity.
Sigs are bad for your health.
With only 1GB of RAM, my machine can't run both Outlook and Windows Indexing. The constant whirring sound from the hard drives is soothing though.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Call me crazy, but I actually just keep logically structured directories and make sure to save items into the appropriate location... It's much simpler to take 10 seconds to place a file in the appropriate directory at the start than to hunt for it later.
Even when a file crosses multiple logical groups, (picture, jpg, family, nephews, 2004) if my information categories are sensible, and I use a heirarchy that makes sense to me, I don't need search that often. In fact, I can't recall the last time I had to do a search of my drive to find a file. (I should probably mention that my work requires a lot of information mapping, so creating and maintaining such a structure is trivial for me)
Of course, since Windows search is so inefficient and (sometimes) problematic, I learned long ago not to rely on it.
bluez3
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
b) have fun!
Sunny Dubey
Per the article's comments about Longhorn and the "end of the browser" and how MS is planning to integrate network access with local services and applications to the point where a browser won't be necessary.:
Did I miss something? I thought Microsoft integerated the net with the local pc back in 1997 when they released IE4 and Windows 98 with desktop integration. Hrmmph... Go figure.
Ok, I'm being facetious.
Still, I'm not so certain this is a feature I want. In fact, until someone can demonstrate an example of why it would be useful, I'm certain I don't. I like having the local PC as a distinct domain separate from the net! I like that I have to open a program to access information that isn't stored locally! What am I missing about this -- is their focus group testing indicating that using a browser is just too confusing?
You know what's confusing? Windows HELP -- and not just how you use it, but THAT IT EVEN EXISTS AT ALL! My lusers come up to me all the time with questions that could easily be answered with good ole' F1.
What bothers me is that all of the work going on at Microsoft is pointed at new ways to annoy me. You want to make me a happyuser? Get your lousy freaking vendor partners to stop auto-running useless programs in my system tray; cancel ActiveX (*without* adding the TDMA crap I don't want) and get rid of the Windows registry. My main concern whenever I hear about these new thingamabobbers they're cooking ip is "Eeek! How hard is it going to be to turn *that* off? I sure hope R&D cancels it before Longhorn gets out of beta." I honestly think it's time they consider forking the project, or XP is my last version of Windows. Period.
There's just no joy in Windows anymore, you know what I mean?
Sincerely,
Eagerly awaiting Debian Sarge going stable in Ohio.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
From the article:
Microsoft believes that Longhorn users will no longer think about where information is stored; they will instead see a unified view of documents stored on both the Internet and on the desktop.
I don't like this idea. At all.
The main problem from my point of view has to do with ownership and control. Generally speaking, what's physically on my machine(s) is *mine*, that is subject to my total control (we'll leave aside intellectual property issues). I can add, change, delete, etc.
Still generally speaking, what's on some machine I access over the net is *not mine* in the sense that my control is reduced. Usually other people can do something with that information (again, add, change, delete) and if the machnine is taken offline, I have no access and no control at all.
As a simple example, consider a web page. In one case I make a local copy of it on my machine. In the other case I just have a bookmark. The difference in control is fairly obvious...
Now, what happens if we make users believe there's no difference between their local hard drive and Internet? That we drill into their heads that they are the same?
Well, you still have no control over information stored on the 'net. Thus, if you were trained to think that the local drive and the 'net are basically the same, then you would expect to have no control over information stored on your hard drive.
Note that by an amazing coincidence, that's also the goal of DRM -- that you have no control over information (that they call content) stored on your hard drive.
Also note that the flip side of the coin -- making your hard drive irrelevant by switching to a subscription service for everything, from OS to applications to content, is also a highly popular idea in Redmond and elsewhere.
So color me highly suspicious with regard to that idea...
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Clearly, you don't use your computer that seriously. I have thousands of files, with many GB of data, accumulated over years, at home. At work, there is a ton of stuff to manage. And guess what? I sometimes have to find something in someone else's files, or they in mine, because the owner is busy. We don't all think alike, after all.
Let's see... then there's project data collections where lots of people are putting things. Employees leave. Some folks just aren't organized. Some people get sent lots of stuff they have to save but not read right then, but which eventually becomes important.
There are lots of reasons that make this a good idea. Yeah, I have homegrown solutions on Linux, but a good, fast tool on any platform is a good idea. We all use Linux at home, but there's no way my wife is going to use grep, find, etc. She hates computers. If she can click on a button, type a word or phrase and get a list, just like any web-based search engine, she'll use that. And I know quite a few folks like that - on every platform with more than a few thousand users.
I have hundreds of word documents, PDF files, text files, e-mails in two different systems, etc.
I purchased Find from <a href="http://www.enfish.com">Enfish</a> and it saves me several minutes everyday. They have fancier products, but $50 for the Find application is all that I needed.
Google will win this battle.
1. Microsoft doesn't understand that people LOVE Google. Nobody particularly LOVES Microsoft anymore. Product activation, high prices, and security flaws are causing too many headaches.
2. Google is more innovative. What has Microsoft innovated in the past few years? Their products keep changing their look, but what about user behavior? AD changed admin behavior, but how has IE or Word gotten easier to use? Google has all kinds of creative stuff in the pipe. The Google toolbar has not only changed the way many of my users search, but it prevents a lot of popup related spyware installations as well.
3. Google is clean. If I see that damn dog show up one more time I'll kill myself. When I search my file system I don't want to hide the stupid mutt, change my options so that subfolders are searched, then click through three screens to say I want to search my file system. Google will cut through this nonsense because they believe in simple/clean interfaces.
4. The technology Microsoft seeks doesn't exist. Nobody can create a search engine based on current technology that takes plain speech user input and magically transforms it into accurate search results. Everyone I've seen that's tried this has failed to an extent. You can't just try your best to fuzzy match and pass it off as good results.
"Never tell me the odds"
Google, well aware of this threat, hired a Microsoft product manager last year to oversee the Puffin project as part of its strategy to compete with Microsoft's incursion into its territory.
That's the first time that I've ever read of it going in a direction away from Microsoft. Usually, it's the other way around, Redmond sucking up the managers and staff if they can't buy or steal the technology.
Pay for software?
Obviously a new guy.
The windows indexing service always leaves me feeling like I somehow missed a critical page in the documentation which would make it work just the way I expect it to.
I can tell it's got a lot of power, and being a part of the OS, it's seamless.. but I just can't seem to make it useful to me.
Google would have a winner on it's hands if it would let me organize (and ensure I have a backup of) all the documents on the five computers in my house. I've got probably 6gb of family pictures, but no good way to organize them by where they were taken, who is in them, etc. I was in a full-blown panic when I accidentally wiped the only copy of that directory, and had to restore it from a DVD backup, copies given to relatives, sent mail, and so on. That's worth money to me, but it really needs to be transparent.
...10,000 Linux systems connected to your local system and it will all run snappy ;)
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Would people be willing to live with ads sprinkled throughout their search items ?
It's sweet. Some features include...
Find the highest quality and most relevant documents; Google factors in more than 100 variables for each query.
Search for secure information and view only those documents to which you have access; results are returned securely for documents protected by either NTLM or basic HTTP authentication.
Judge relevance of results more easily via dynamically generated snippets showing your query in the context of the page.
Navigate search results easily and clearly using intelligent grouping of documents residing in the same narrow subdirectories.
Avoid missing results through typos or misspellings as Google automatically suggests corrections with startling accuracy, even on company-specific words and phrases.
View search results even when the sites are down via cached copies of pages included in the search results.
Quickly find the most relevant section of a document via highlighted query terms displayed on cached documents.
Glimpse documents without needing the original client application of the file format via automatic reformatting of over 220 file types into HTML.
Access time-sensitive information first via date sorting.
Perform complex and sophisticated queries with over 10 special query terms, including Boolean AND, OR, and NOT searches.
More details are available at the appliance page on Google.
#2 above probably won't show up in the personal desktop version of the search, thouhg it is really is handy for the appliance -- even if you manage a modest sized office.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
1. Netscape conquers the browser market...
2. Netscape IPOs and climbs to some insanely high value...
3. Microsoft integrates browser into OS...
4. Netscape crubles...
- - - - fast forward - - - -
1. Google conquers the search market...
2. Google IPOs and climbs to some insanely high value... (coming soon)
3. Microsoft integrates search into OS... [Longhorn] (coming eventually)
Where do you think the rest of this goes?