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.

Comments

Linux Version

[Bruha]

I guess Google must not know that Linux has now outpaced desktop installs vs Mac's..

Besides it would make sense to do both the only real difference is the UI programming at least for OS X, the filesystems on both systems are very similar.

Re:Linux Version

[pe1chl]

The issue probably is not the filesystem, but rather the UI programming and the linking of programs to document types.
This is of course very different between Windows, Mac and Linux (and within Linux there are, as usual, several different methods)

Re:Linux Version

[michaeldot]

I guess Google must not know that Linux has now outpaced desktop installs vs Mac's..

Apart from the fact that stat was falsified, they are VERY different users.

Most Linux users are capable of writing Google for themselves, or at least know how to grep search anything they want.

Mac users are probably the ones who would appreciate Google's finesse the most.

Re:Linux Version

[voixderaison]

Over 90% of the visits to my company's web site are from Mac OS X systems. Do I conclude that nobody is using Windows PC's any longer? Perhaps not, since our site is of interest primarily to Macintosh users. The numbers from your home page might be skewed a bit by the subject matter of your page. Statistics from major, high traffic sites (cnn.com perhaps) might provide a better indication of what systems people use to surf the net.

Macintosh numbers are not particularly high, granted. Interestingly enough, these sorta stats may also over-represent the Macintosh user base. How's that? Well, we know that 80% of home user PC systems running Windows are infected with viruses, ad-ware, spy-ware, worms, and bots. Anecdotal evidence indicates that some significant portion of people using Windows systems don't use the internet much, if at all, due to their experiences with malware. I've even met Windows users who have given up on email, and basically don't use the internet at all!

Macintosh users, by contrast, are dramatically over-represented in the Coffee Shop Count. Watch during any week in almost any coffee shop with wireless internet access, and you'll see anywhere from 15% to 90% iBook and PowerBook systems. Even the low end of your observations will be double the representation one would expect from the installed user base. Macintosh users seem to use their systems more, user the internet more, and use wireless access in public places more, on average, than Windows users.

I expect to see a similar trend over the next year with Intel based systems running Linux, due to recent and forthcoming improvements in wireless configurations on Linux.

Re:Linux Version

[Gumber]

I'd guess that Google probably has VERY good stats on what OSs Google users are using.

They also probably realize that among the influencers in chattering classes (bloggers, journalists, etc), Macs enjoy a higher than average marketshare.

Re:Spotlight?

[jdwest]

Because not everyone will not upgrade to Tiger immediately, if ever.

"Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X

[YetAnotherName]

I'm curious what improvements Google will make to the overall user experience of Mac OS X. Search is already a fundamental part of the Mac desktop experience: virtually every application features a search field in the upper-right hand corner of the window (lower-right-ish for some bizarre reason on iCal). The Google mantra of "search, don't sort" is at least partially alive on this platform today.

Re:"Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X

[bt]

Search is already a fundamental part of the Mac desktop experience...

Individual apps integrate search well, but as an overall system, search on the mac leaves a lot to be desired. Searches using the Finder SUCK: they take forver, and they don't ever seem to help you find what you're looking for.

Tiger (10.4) should improve this quite a bit with Spotlight, Apple's new index/search architecture, which includes a nice plugin system (recently described in more detail here). This theoretically will enable Spotlight to search everything the Google Desktop searches. If Apple can deliver reasonable indexing speeds and quality search results, they're going to be able to compete.

On the other hand, because Apple's already baked in support for Google via Safari, most Mac users are already trained to use Google as their Internet search tool of choice. A Google desktop would extend this behavior seamlessly, so I'll be really curious to see if Apple can retrain users to use Spotlight for local searches. My guess is if Google can deliver soon enough, Spotlight will be a second-try search tool on the Mac.

But wouldn't it be cool to see Apple and Google would combine their efforts?

Re:"Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X

[singleantler]

I've found the search on 10.3 to be OK. It's not as quick as Google Desktop on my PC, but then it searches a great deal more types of document. It is annoying that it doesn't seem to work for characters like $ and ?, so searching on PHP files can be a pain if you're after certain variables.

I'm finding Google Desktop relatively useless because most of my docs are in OO.o format, or old Works documents (.wps), neither of which it indexes. It also doesn't index my PHP or ColdFusion code at all, which means I still need to do a standard search on them when I'm looking for something odd. If GD comes out for the Mac, it'll have to be better than the version on the PC for me to use it.

Re:Spotlight?

[barcodez]

Competition on this can only be a good thing - more choice for the consumer, and it will push both Google and Apple to make better products.

Why not cross-platform ?

[InodoroPereyra]

Wouldn't it have made more sense to begin Windows development on something like Qt, that can then be recompiled for Mac, Linux, BSD, etc ? Qt's abstraction for the filesystem would probably have been enough for them, and the GUI capabilities are way more than they need. Not to mention i18n and so forth.

Or, if Qt is an issue, why not Java ?

And we are talking Google, the Champions of the internet, and a serious competitor for MS on some areas ... cross platform should be the way to go for them !

Re:Why not cross-platform ?

[Dante Shamest]

They don't need cross-platform toolkits. They hire cross-platform programmers, who are experienced in coding in native apis like Xlib and Windows API.

Or, if Qt is an issue, why not Java ?

Maybe because Java requires the end-user to install a Java Virtual Machine? Remember, we're dealing with the desktop market here. The less things the average user has to install to get things running, the better.

And don't tell me Java is already intalled everywhere, ok? It isn't.

The greater plan

[3770]

It could be that the first version of Googles software doesn't do anything that Spotlight doesn't. But they probably have a business plan that is far more far reaching than people think.

They may just be doing the ground work and getting an installed base for the next version Google Desktop which will connect you to froogle and let you search your desktop as well as your Google Mail in one fell swoop.

I'm just trying to think how they can integrate their Google Desktop with what they already have to make money.

Didn't they just buy a map company?

So you could have this one box where you do a search and if Google Desktop recognizes it as an address it'll bring up a map instead of searching your local computer. Much like it gives you the answer 4 when you type in 2 + 2 instead of searching the web.

So Google is in a position where they can give you one single search box which will let you search for anything you want and it will intelligently look in the right place.

Re:Typical Apple Fanatic's Take...

[MoonBuggy]

That's a little harsh - the grandparent wasn't saying that Google shouldn't do this, simply that they could have better used their time to make a more useful product since an OS integrated version of the same thing is coming soon.

I'm a Mac user, and on one hand I quite agree that this competition is good for us - Google's program is good and motivates Spotlight to be better, and Dashboard vs Konfabulator promises to force innovation from both sides. OTOH though, Google, Apple and Pixoria are all excellent software makers and if each focused on things that weren't being done by the others it would be an overall gain in the quantity of useful software without much of a quality hit since these people all have a history of doing things well much of the time, competition or none.

I don't really know what the optimum balance would be here, but I don't think that Google have quite hit it - I just feel that they're misdirecting their time on things that are already being done well by Apple, just as Apple are wasting their time on things that are already being done well by Pixoria.

Re:Hard to believe

[Quobobo]

This would be a valid point, if it weren't something that simply has to be tied into the OS itself. This is a product that's supposed to integrate into the user's desktop and existing applications, and a big part of that is always fitting in with the OS. I agree with what you're saying, it's a good mantra to go by for most applications, but for things like this you want a "native" feel. Plus, we're talking about Mac users here, arguably the most picky when it comes to UI issues.

They'll probably try to reuse as much as they can, and build the rest of it from the ground up for OS X. This is a very good thing, from the opinion of a Mac user (me).

Re:Is it just me...

[cryogenic]

I know where practically everything is on my computer as well, but I can't (for example) remember the content of every log file I store in the log directory. Remember that the primary goal of Desktop Search is not to find your file by name, but to find your file by content.

Re:Linux version won't please

[sketerpot]

They can't create a Linux version because all the OSS hippies will just blast it for being evil propriety software and run around posting links to some BS app on SourceForge thats supposedly 6.2 million trillion times better than GDS.

Actually, Google is pretty damn popular. How can you not love a company that offers very good search for free and doesn't screw over customers while still being profitable?

Besides, it's also way too easy to install. Linux users are masochists that way.

RPMs and those Debian packages and the Gentoo Portage system all show that Linux users like being able to install things easily. On my Fedora machine, I really like being able to keep everything up to date with a simple "yum update" command (or there's a pretty GUI for it, but I haven't used it).

Why?

[CODiNE]

Everybody is asking why compete with Spotlight... I say power grab. Get it out before Longhorn, get it out before Tiger... cash in on the google brand-name. There's more coming, this is just getting their foot in the door. A few years ago they could've really gone for the whole enchillada with a tactic like this... now... prob too late. Any thoughts?

-Don.

Spotlight vs. Google Desktop

[fulldecent]

The situation is simple:

Spotlight for Mac owns Google Desktop for Windows.

Google desktop is great on Windows, which has nothing. But on Mac... it can't compete with the type-ahead find. The only way it will come close is if they change their strategy and create a desktop app rather than a web app.