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Google to Launch Mac Version of Google Desktop UPDATED

Posted by michael on from the still-waiting-for-debian-package dept.

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.

2 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. "Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X by YetAnotherName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:"Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X by bt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?