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Google Launches Desktop Search Tool
hanky writes "Google brings search to your very desktop with Google Desktop, a mini Google index of your own. Search your filesystem, Outlook or Outlook Express inbox, AIM instant message transcripts, and Internet Explorer cache. There's a full introduction to the Google Desktop over at the O'Reilly Network. It's Windows-only, but still cool enough for this Mac guy to find it intriguing."
Being able to google my machine would be the best thing this side of perpetual motion.
Having to start doing everything with AIM, IE, Outlook and MS-Office would be the worst thing this side of the universal solvent.
Why, oh why, did they have to specifically aim this at all the apps I don't use?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
So far in my testing, it has performed better than MS's own indexing service which comes with Windows.
[alk]
Doesn't work with Mozilla, or Opera, or Pegasus mail, or Eudora..... Guess I'll wait for something less MS centric.
Three Squirrels
Thanks to me being a slashdot subscriber ive now had this for 6 mins and can offer a 6 minute review.
GOOGLE DESKTOP HAS CHANGED MY LIFE!!!
i achived in the past 5 minutes more than the previous 3 weeks. It found my car keys (they were under the pile of oreily books)!!!
Official GOD FAQ.
Do you forget Spotlight technology in Tiger which does this too and is integrated into the OS?
forget it.
Now my wife could easily find out if I've been downloading porn.
Great intention, bad Idea.
Yahoo's coverage says: "Microsoft Corp., which is working on a similar file-searching tool that it recently said would not be ready for the next version of its Windows operating system promised for 2006."
So it looks like the new MS search functionality won't even make it into Longhorn? I don't see why it's so difficult... I mean if Google could accomplish it, without intimate knowledge of the OS, Office/Outlook/etc file formats, and such, why can't MS do it 5 times faster? I'm confused.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
Already two Mac people in my office are fairly jealous, because this is what they thought Sherlock would be- but wasn't.
It's also what Spotlight should be...(next release of OS X, Tiger)
Monstar L
Come on Google, PowerPC users are a significant share of your audience.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
It helped me find a girlfriend! Thank you Google Desktop Search!
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
The product is still in beta, and on the About Google Desktop page, they say:
:)
"Google Desktop Search is still under development as a beta product. We intend to add new file, email, and chat formats and browsers as Google Desktop Search evolves, and when new formats are created and used. If there's a format you'd like Google Desktop Search to be able to search, please let us know. We can't guarantee that we'll add every type that's suggested, but your suggestions will let us know what formats are important to you."
I'm going to go suggest a couple right now, and get in on the ground floor
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
What's next? The Google operating system? Are we looking at the beginnings of a next-generation Microsoft-like empire?
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
For those of you that don't know, take a look: http://lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/
Microsoft bought this company which beat Google to the punch on desktop searching. Kinda funny that the letters on the main logo look very Googlish...
Of course, what would be really nice is if new formats were supported via plugins, and if google would distribute a simple API so the open source community could contribute new plugins rather than waiting for google to implement them.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Only one possible conclusion to be drawn: Google Desktop must contain a trojan distributed file system which provides the storage space for GMail ;-)
It's just a little game of give and take (a gig)
Great intention, bad Idea.
Google search and ranking in my pc!??! How will all of the PIGEONS fit in there?!!?
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My suspicion is that they went after the most popular applications first, with additions coming in the future.
This makes sense: start with a larger userbase. If someone wrote a really great audio tool, that only supported OGG instead of MP3, it wouldn't take off very fast (if at all). Same thing here.
MS is big. Really really really big. Gigantic. This means that often things are not going to be moving all that fast but worse still it allows for a real danger off management explosion. 10 progammers need 1 manager. 100 programmers need 10 manager and a manager to manage the managers. 10.000 programmers need 100 managers plus 10 managers of managers and 1 to manage all them and so on right?
WRONG. It is more like 100 programmers need about 10 technical officers, 10 project leaders, 5 project supervisors, a human resource staff, marketing, etc etc etc. To lazy to type it all out but I been in situations where software development had me the programmer reporting to well over a dozen managers all who had their own agenda. So I spend less time programming then doing meetings.
Worse a really good programmer who just spends his time developing will be quickly out of the loop and unable to find an audience for his ideas.
MS probably has several teams who could easily do this. They are just lost somewhere in the management jungle.
Why not find them? Well why should they? Management is doing okay, windows keeps selling the bonusses keep coming in. Why should management go after those creepy skilled programmers when they can deal with nicely suited once who speak their language and deliver the next point upgrade not to much past the deadline?
Lets be honest (ms apologists cover your ears) MS has never been an inovative company at the leading edge. For crying out loud, it started as a unix company after every one else already had done unix and then turned it into dos.
it added a gui only after only everyone else had done one and stole the design. it only got a somewhat 32bit OS by stealing it from IBM and the final irony (someone else pointed this out to me recently) only got that 32bit after others had already had gone to 64bit.
MS can do it 5 times faster, if it wanted. It doesn't. So far playing catchup has worked extremely well. What you don't like the MS search function? Your not that bright are you? The only reason you don't like it is because you paid MS to use it. They got your money wether you like it or not. Your confused and poor, Billy isn't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Spotlight is better and it is fast! In Macworld keynote speech, Jobs demonstrated it and the search result was fast and instantaneous"
:P I don't know whether to laugh or be scared of your gullibility.
Because we all know company demonstrations from CEOs are done in realtime using the current alpha software.
The is a better tool out there for the mac: QuickSilver
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
I have been using that for months now and don't know how I could get by without it.
Does anyone remember the targetted advertising of Gmail and how it sorta browses your email to place "relevent" ads on your screen?
Now uhh.. they want to be on your desktop, integrating with the browser, your email, your chat clients and so on?
Am I the only one that didn't overlook that just maybe Google wants to get in on the ground floor of your computer so it can sell you shit you're only vaguely interested in? Now I know that it says it'll only send what you give it explicit permission to send (did you read that EULA carefully? I didn't, just considering the possibilities) Also says non-identifying statistics will be sent.. you can opt out of that. What statistics? The list really sorta goes on. I'm not slamming Google for doing this. I just don't trust them as far as baby pigs can hop.
I personally can't imagine me giving Google permission to browse my computer, email, and chats at will. That's some scary stuff. I can see Homeland Security rubbing their hands together and writing the "we want that info" letters now--cause we're all terrorists you know... it's only the degree of terror we're willing to inflict.
The world according to SComps
She KNOWS you have been downloading porn. This will just let her find the evidence.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It's a lot less fun when your Google search finds your OWN porn.