Google Desktop API Released

aarbear writes "Airbear Software has just released an API to Google Desktop, a free tool from Google to search your own computer. In short, the API allows access to Google Desktop through the command line. Results are outputted to a file formatted with either XML, CSV, or custom formatting. The API is implemented through Airbear Software's popular Google Desktop add-on, gdSuite, so the API also adds advanced search options to Google Desktop. Google Desktop Search allows you to instantly find emails (from Outlook and Outlook Express), chats (in AOL and AOL Instant Message [AIM]), and web pages you've viewed in Internet Explorer. In addition, you can find any file by filename and can search inside Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. However, before gdSuite and this API, users could only search from their web browsers."

Comments

It's only a matter of time...

[G-Licious!]

...before spyware becomes Google Desktop enabled!

Slashvertisment

[zemoo]

Isn't this just a plug for the Airbear product? Look at the submitter!

Who would realistically use this API for anything serious? Google will probably break it on the next program update anyways (GMail notifiers, anyone?)

Re:Slashvertisment

[aarbear]

I am not charging for the API because I, as a poor, frugal student, hate having to pay for products and don't want to be a hypocrit by charging for my own. At the same time, however, I don't want to release soure because I want to keep control of my work and who uses it, just like most other freeware developers who don't release source. Also, if I released source, spyware/malware developers could capitolize on it, as other have pointed out.

Re:Microsft, Google, and the search wars

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Why would Google release a Google Desktop Search for Linux or Mac OS X, when both have applications which already provide an equivalent service? Windows was clearly the best choice because Windows' Indexing service is horrendous, and thus Windows would benefit from such a service.

'Do no evil' is not equivalent to 'Do for those that also do no evil'.

Re:Microsft, Google, and the search wars

[cyber0ne]

Its not like google has released a tool to the unix world either, which shows that they still put the market above the glory.

First and foremost, Google is a business. What you call "put[ting] the market above the glory" they call "turning a profit." I won't pretend to know their business in any way, but it's safe to say that targetting the 90% marketshare over the 10% is a better idea.

Note also that other OSes already have, and have had for years, excellent search tools. An avid *nix user who has incorporated locate, grep, sed, awk, etc. into all his scripts and tools isn't about to run this.

When the biggest company in the world

Walmart?

with thousands of programmers can't create an efficient indexing tool for searching, you have some problems. I just wonder about the quality of longhorn and I will continue to use linux for years to come most likely.

Agreed. I imagine Longhorn will be shiny and new and suck in all kinds of innovative ways. I'll still end up with a copy in my hands and I'll still install it on one of my machines, but that's neither here nor there. I'm mostly curious to see it just to see where Microsoft is taking their overall design of this product, or if it's just another re-hash of the same old crap that's been going on since 95. Sure, a lot in Windows has gradually changed since 95, but they're keeping up the same pattern of replacing one design flaw with another and watching the whole thing bloat out of control. I picture a ball of duct tape that they just keep adding to, hoping that the next piece will make it a perfect sphere.

It would appear that locate is a tool that the windows world is badly in need of the fact that its been around as long as it has should be humiliating to windows developers.

Again, agreed. I can't imagine how something as vital as a set of search tools has eluded them for so long. Perhaps they haven't seen a need for anything of the sort, but all too often I hear an "average user" complain (on IRC mostly) about how he/she downloaded a file and now doesn't know where it is. A search-engine style tool for their machine would be the obvious solution, in my opinion.

Note, however, that you make mention of locate as a tool badly needed by Windows. This somewhat contradicts your earlier assertion that Google should release their software for *nix, since here you point out that something already exists. Again, I'm just pointing out that the *nix world has no vacuum to be filled by Google's Desktop Search, so they have very little reason (other than "geek cred") to make a *nix version.

Just now they are figuring out how to create indexed searches on hard drives and the media makes it a huge deal. Well they lost to unix based systems by a matter of years.

This isn't the first time they've done something like that. I remember back in school when I read an article about an innovative new feature in the upcoming Windows 2000 which will save diskspace by allowing users to create "hard links" to duplicate files on their computer. It brought a small chuckle to my day. I don't know what ever happened to that "innovation" and I've never heard of anyone doing such a thing in Windows. I guess the greatest disappointment was that I hoped at the time that they were taking the first step to replacing shortcuts with symlinks. Alas, I'm still waiting.