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Google to Launch Mac Version of Google Desktop UPDATED
phaedo00 writes "Arstechnica is reporting that Google today announced that they are pursuing a Google Desktop for Apple's Mac OS X. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt saying it had to be rebuilt from the ground up because of the fundamental differences between the Mac OS and Windows. 'We intend to do it,' Schmidt said." Update: 10/30 23:51 GMT by M : Seems like Reuters and others may have heard wrong about a potential Mac version.
Current list of supported formats in addition to HTML include TeX, DVI, PS, full text, mail, man pages, news, troff, WordPerfect, RTF, Microsoft Word/Excel, SGML, C sources and many more. Stubs for PDF support is included in Harvest and will use Xpdf or Acroread to process PDF files. Adding support for new format is easy due to Harvest's modular design.
There are a few others, do your own homework if you want themI'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
The competition is going to be tough on the Mac platform with launchbar, quicksilver allready there and do not forget apple's upcomming spotlight. Seems like another fine example of a function at which the Mac platform is ahead of its competition: "fast access to content".
You cannot define which directories to index, and it only indexes single machine.
Yes, you can. Look harder.The google search keeps index of the data on the desktop harddrive. If you have lots of files, the index size gets insanely large, some say nearly 2Gb when you have large amount of documents lying around.
That's why you should configure GD to only index your work folders. .... Some other interesting stuff
You can already sort of do this. See HarvestI'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
I'm guesing a linux/unix version would come after the max version. there's allot of flavors of linux/unix, so it might be handy if they have some experience from doing it good on other systems first.
... They wrote GFS (different than Redhat's GFS) for linux too ...
You do realize that Google has very much mastered linux ? After all, Linux does power their 15,000+ cluster
Sunny Dubey
The question is: why?
I have the WWDC Tiger Beta and Spotlight is just flawless. It's totally integrated into the desktop instead of just being browser based, it supports way more file formats, it searches in real time as you type, it lets you save searches as virtual folders and what not...
Not to mention that Mac users are a fanatical bunch that usually upgrade when they have the chance, meaning that a year from now the majority will be using Tiger.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Most importantly, this is not about API, this is about data. What this is all about is searching and indexing datafiles and from this point of view the files on a typical Mac OS X machine and a Linux desktop will be quite different.
For instance on Mac OS X, some data files are actually bundles, i.e a directory with a special bit telling the Finder to handle the folder as a single file. Keynotes files are bundles with extension .key that contain an XML manifest an the different files included in the presentation. Older Mac OS filetypes would store some meta-data (icons, keywords) in the resource forks. Those things have, as far as I know, no equivalent in the Linux world.
On the other hand, a Linux version would have to cope with the differences between distributions (what source code should be indexed on gentoo machine?) , the different desktop managers (they might store interesting information), and different file format (it would be nice if it could parse tgif files for instance).
In the end, it is all about data, not about licences, APIs or anything else. The whole point of meta-data and searching, for me, is not about indexing my music collection (I keep it organised), but to be able to search my old files, which include Quickdraw 1 Picts and Word 4.0 (DOS) files.
theres already a wonderful desktop search program called quicksilver for mac os x thats much more secure than google
I would imagine the vast majority of the work involved in developing this is platform-specific, mostly due to the differences in file systems.
Why is anything anything?
Spotlight is not an app, it is a collection of technologies which make it possible for 3rd party apps to support searching.
At the same time, the 1st party (Apple) will be demonstrating how it's done by building search into all the system's own apps, eg, searching for the control panel which changes the desktop pattern within the control panels area. Yes, I know I'm calling them control panels when they're actually system preferences because most posters sound like they haven't used Mac OS X.)
This doesn't mean 3rd parties shouldn't attempt to compete at searching, quite the reverse: Spotlight is FOR 3rd party developers who want to do searching..
So not only would Google Desktop not be in competition with Spotlight, it could actually use its hooks into the OS to create something very powerful indeed.
In this case, though, what the non-Apple competition is going to be offering (at least in relation to Spotlight) is much less.
Disclaimer: I've used GDS beta on Windows, and I've used Spotlight on the Tiger WWDC preview. I'm sure what both companies will offer in sucessive versions will be more advanced.
GDS on Windows is a nice idea that's limited by the small number of data formats that it supports. The only file formats it understands are the ones specifically baked into it by Google. There is no way (at current) for a developer to add support for custom file formats, nor does it give you any way to exploit the metadata already present in many very common file formats (e.g. JPEG, PNG, MP3, etc.) In other words, if I had a 1024x768 picture of a Porsche 911 called "Porsche 911.jpg" on my HD, I could find it with GDS by searching for "porsche" or "911" or ".jpg". On the plus side, the formats that Google already knows about (eg AIM logs, Outlook [gack] emails) are well-supported.
Spotlight, however, indexes the inbuilt metadata as well, so not only could I search on parts of the filename, as above, I could also search for "picture files that are 1024 x 768" or have "epson" in their EXIF tags. In addition, if I write a graphics app and use "marmoset's magnificent graphics format" (MMGF) as my native storage format, I can write a Spotlight plugin that tells the OS how to understand the "underpants gnome" tags I've embedded in the images.
The market share of Linux is NOT measurable in any way since it mostly isn't sold but downloaded and who knows how many time each user downloaded their distros for various reasons (I know I downloaded parts of many flavors of Linux, I don't use them at all, I tried them and haven't stick with it). Someone downloading Linux doesn't mean he is going to use it, he might just want to do this, try it, that doesn't mean he will use. So, NO way of measuring the market share of Linux, plus Linux comes in a myriad of flavors called distros most of which contain stuff that will only run on their packages, Linux isn't even compatible with Linux most of the time. So which distro has the market share over the Mac? None, Linux the kernel might be popular but it's hardly a system. Even if you consider it a system we go back to point number 1; its market share CANNOT be measured.
So speculate as much as you whish give yourself any amount of pat in the back but reality check:
Linux is a patchwork of bordelic code made by some incredibly self-centered devellopper that won't take a iota of criticism and truly live in an alternate reality, I know its hard to take but this is how me and every person I work with view this. It doesn't have any significant market share and if truly more than 5% of the world use this tell me why I have seen only 3 Linux box in the past years (last year actually) in internationnal conventions on subject ranging from science to politics to education to unions to IBM conventions and so on. This is my job I am an AV technician and I do mostly internationnal conventions of all type, people come there from all over the world to speak on a myriad of subjects, I have seen WAY more Macs than I have seen Linux boxes, their number is even groing to the point where my boss actually wants to BUY some Macs for the company because they are now inevitable. PC data me as you whish this is where we are at. And I am writting this on my personnal PC a 4230$ machine that runs windows, I am no mac freak in any sense of the term, this is pure observation. BTW even when doing a convention on its Linux services, IBM asked us to use windows machine for their convention and not even 1% of the attendants were using Linux.
Have you ever thought that the MS "war" on Linux is merely a way to divert your attention from the Mac by making another system suposedly the center of attention, a system that has, as of now, no chance to compete with anyone outside of the server market?
Now since I said that on Slashdot I find it sad that most won't read this (this reality check has been in need for a long while and has been formulated by MANY in hope that one day, instead of whinning, the Linux community actually accepts it and do something about it so it can become the great stuff it should be), I'll be modded down first thing following the post...
Actually, this was addressed, and demonstrated by Steve Jobs when Tiger was announced.
Not only will Spotlight be integrated into the mail client, but so will dynamic mailboxes and such, just like the dynamic playlists in iTunes.
I, for one, am anxiously looking forward to this functionality, as dynamic catalogging of my mail will boost my productivity significantly.
But hey, if Google can also implement this, and do it better than Apple, then I'd be happy to use their app instead. Looking forward to comparing the two.
If only the search tool would support OpenOffice documents, it would be more useful to many people. Surely the zip'd XML dormat is easier to figure out than the intentionally-difficult-to-parse Offiec format. [Hint for google employees]
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
The end goal of google desktop is attach advertisements to information gathered from data all over your machine. I haven't downloaded it, so I'm not entirely sure of its capabilities or whether is does that or not (I only have a mac here). However, considering that something like this is more like spyware with vastly intelligent (patented) algorithsm, oppose to Gators strstr() algorithm.
Spotlights end goal is to help you find your files without using that crap Finder. Apple doesn't want you to use Safari to receive ads collected by Spotlight and then buy stuff, its another improvement to the steering wheel for your computer. Google wants to generate ad revenue and your data is part of their business model.
I personally don't like any company using my computer as an advertising platform, it just erks me. I don't want to be part of business model that doesn't profit me and doesn't guarantee my privacy and protection, which Google and no other company can.
Probably one of the more accurate accounts of installed base for various operating systems was Google itself on the old Google Zeigeist pages. Unfortionately Google didn't like people using their Zeitgeist pages to infer market share so they stopped doing it last July, but June 2004 shows Linux accounting for 1% of Google searches and MacOS 3%. Certainly Google still tracks this information internally and the fact that they are releasing a MacOS version of their desktop tool says a lot about how MacOS is doing in the market.
Google Zeitgeist June, 2004