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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.
Why would google try to compete with Spotlight which will offer a lot more features than googles win-desktop search does?
It's great to see this happening, but what I'd really like to see is a Linux version.
Of course, most of the world doesn't care, so it wouldn't be likely 2 happen.
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.
BSD version :)
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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.
I thought Google doesn't suffer so much from bad design. Tying such app to platform is definitely very bad design choice, especially if there are plans to port it to different platforms. They could save a lot of development time by using platform abstraction instead of direct usage of Win32 API throughout the code. I wonder why Google engineers have chosen such a strange approach. Maybe they were too short of time?
The idea of desktop search is good, but I think the google version lacks in few details.
.doc .ppt etc. formats.
You cannot define which directories to index, and it only indexes single machine. (understandable since it's desktop search, not small network search)
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.
It would be relatively easy to build something similar which would work over administrative shares using samba crawlers with defined administrative password for each machine, and you'd have control of which data it would collect. Maybe nfs crawlers too. Plenty of both freely available.
Tricky part is to create the meta indexing of the containing
But the more open developement would allow other indexing, such as ID3 tags.
And perhaps you could add your own meta data to indexed files by filetype, and enhance the search for example only images by containing meta description something like: "meta this image has: cat vase window apple". Search for apple and it returns that picture, crude but works atleast partially.
Problem with this kind of version is that you'd need separate server for the searching, you could reuse some old machine for this.(not problem for most of people here since everyone has extra box somewhere in intranet)
Make the search running with mysql+apache and it would be almost platform independent.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
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".
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
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 !
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.
Besides, it's also way too easy to install. Linux users are masochists that way.
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.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
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.
Maybe he uses a Mac?
Everything Google has done so far has been pure gold, so it's hard not to believe they've their acquired their taste from having at least a passing familiarity with the best designed OS GUI around.
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.
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.
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.
am I the only person in the world who knows just where I put everything on my computer?
No, not just you, there's also the people who sort their book library by Dewey decimals, have cataloged everything they've ever recorded onto videotape, and enter all the fields on iTunes tracks.
On second thoughts, yes, it is just you, you anal-retentive freak! :)
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...
I'm using Windows ME
Don't look now, but I think your /, account has been hacked. This can't be a serious post. No self respecting registered slashdotter would use Windows ME -- it was terrible. Hell, I wouldn't even expect that of an Anonymous Coward.
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.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
This it true, but for the most part Apple can possibly offer a better product given the way it ties with the operating system. Google Desktop search may be limited by this fact.
My UID is prime is yours?
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 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.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
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.
Right. But how fast is spotlight? To me, that's the single most impressive thing about the google product. It gives me results from a fullish disk, with several million-plus LOC code bases on it, almost instantaneously. I'll be impressed (and happy) if spotlight is half as speedy.
A.