Google Adds Features and Plugin to Desktop Search

Matthew Bischoff writes "Today Google added new features to its popular desktop software. Google Desktop now supports alternative Netscape based browsers like Firefox, PDFs, images, video, and music files. Google also added a plug-ins feature so that developers can integrate their software into the Google Desktop catalog. Another new addition is a supported way to search from Google's deskbar software. It's probably a matter of time until we see desktop search integrated into all of the Google products including the controversial Google Toolbar 3." Google Desktop is also officially now out of beta.

Comments

Re:Wow, who uses this?

[freitasm]

I actually use this - as a Server Search tool! Check some instructions ... Not sure if it is going to work with this new Google Desktop Search version - but will test soon.

Is Microsoft out of the loop?

[tabkey12]

Who wants WinFS in 2 or 3 years when you can have Google Desktop Search now, for free?

Also, good to see Google isn't doing an eternal beta on this product like its Google News offering (the whole beta thing gets annoying after 2 continuous years!)

So is there a catch ?

[88NoSoup4U88]

So is there any catch to their desktop tool ?
I assume they're not risking their "don't do any bad "-policy for this ?

So what -is- the catch ?
I am fedup with using the regurlar search in Windows, so I am defenitely in for some improvement.

Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[stratjakt]

I've had Google Desktop Search installed on my main machine for a couple months now.

What, exactly does it do? Find files by name? I already have a tool to do that.

I mean, it's just another useless service to run.

I'm being serious. Tell me something neat and impressive that I can make it do, so I too can start preaching the genious of Google.

I tried searching, for example, for some phrases that I know are in some sourcecode files I have. It didn't find the files containing the code. I guess it doesnt recognize .c or .h as text to index them?

If found stuff in a word doc that i made just to test it, but the built in search already does that.

So, what's it do? Why do I need it? Why does this need to be integrated into every app on my desktop?

SUSE 9.3 Pro (03/09/2005) with desktop search

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, SUSE Pro 9.3 is said to be released this Wednesday the 9th, with Beagle (Desktop search) and iPod support, according to the following article which even Novell.com links to on their front page:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,390 20 390,39190538,00.htm

Is Google Desktop Search > Beagle?

Still requires admin rights to use

[Kagami001]

"Google Desktop Search can only be used when the account from which it was installed is logged in."

Yep, that lovely message is still there when I try to use it in my main work account.
Oh, well. Maybe next time.

Re:Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[lelitsch]

Find every occurence of a name in 400MB worth of email in less than a second. Something that crashes Eudora and takes forever in Outlook.

Who cares in two months?

[maxhead]

Does this matter in the face of Apple releasing search throughout Tiger in the next two months? Microsoft are behind, but still have search coming in Longhorn next year.

Search is great, but I don't see a value-add for anyone other than the OS company itself to develop it.

Got to love that panic response to Copernic 1.5

[CdBee]

There's been an informal campaign for mozilla suite support in GDS ever since it was launched

Last week Copernic 1.5b was released with full support, now Google are producing the same feature. Coincidence? If so tough luck, I already switched from GDS!

Re:Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[stratjakt]

Cool.

I don't delete emails. I happen to be using Outlook, too.

Google search doesnt (the version I tried) index the mailbox.pst file. Maybe it does now. My .pst file is 724,304KB at the moment.

So searching all my email for all references to a particular product takes... 29 seconds for a full text search. Less than two for a subject line only search.

Google does this better or faster? How please, because like I said, it didn't index the .pst file at all when I tried it.

If it works, then maybe that's something useful. Frankly though, 29 seconds isn't going to break me.

Lots of problems....

[DarkMantle]

There are alot of problems this has with Antivirus and firewall programs. See here for a list.

I'm not sure why NOD32's Internet Monitor affects a DESKTOP search. But I can't use it as long as I'm using my AV program of choice. Does this make sense to anyone? Because I can't figure it out.

BTW: this has been a known issue for a few months now.

Re:Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[LiquidCoooled]

Windows also needs a plugin.

I thought at the very least, the search tools would have an automatic list of files to EXCLUDE.

Get rid of avi files and iso images (by default) and large archives, and I might actually find whats in front of me.

I hate NOT knowing whats missing, and its worse knowing there is a file right in front of me, but the search tool refuses to index it.

I made my own in the end, and it handles everything I can throw at it.

Re:Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[mstra]

The more I've played with this, the more useful it's been. It's not been terribly useful on my home PC...but at work, it's a godsend.

For example: I did a GDS search for the name of a server I was building last week.

Bam. I got every document I had about that server. The online change requests. The service requests to site engineering. The operational handbook I wrote. The inventory spreadsheet.

Wow. That was pretty cool.

I also found out that while GDS doesn't index networked drives/shares, it *will* include documents on the network that you have opened in its search results. That was pretty good too.

It's also useful on a couple of our intranet sites. Just this morning I had to find a change request for a server - using the search mechanism of our change system is difficult at best - but because I could search it in Google, it came up right away.

Re:Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[Anonymous Coward]

The other day someone gave me their cell number on AIM. A couple days later I needed to find it--I only remembered the area code, so I typed that in my Firefox search bar and Google Desktop inserted my AIM chat at the top of the results page...easy.

It's free AIM logging for someone who doesn't like Trillian or DeadAIM or etc for one.

Now it does Firefox history too.

Also its great for searching through the monstrosity that is my development folder--if you remember a scrap of code, Google will find it in a second...the need for Windows' Start->Search just really doesn't exist anymore.

Re:Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[ratsnapple tea]

Who cares? Mac OS X Mail.app does this already. It's just like iTunes.

it uses a OSS software to do that

[Anonymous Coward]

What is cool is that they use free software:
C:\Archivos de programa\Google\Google Desktop Search>pdftohtml.exe
pdftohtml version 0.33a http://pdftohtml.sourceforge.net/
Copyright 1999-2002 Gueorgui Ovtcharov and Rainer Dorsch
based on Xpdf version 2.03
Copyright 1996-2003 Glyph & Cog, LLC

Also, in the directory you'll find this:
aa ### WARNING - Do not
ab ### move or delete these
ac ### files - your system
ad ### may stop working
af ### To uninstall use
ag ### Add-Remove programs
ah ### in the control panel
ai ### or run
ak ### GoogleDesktopSearchSetup.exe -uninstall

Those are FILE NAMES. They're so when you open the directory you see the "message". Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Those guys know what are doing.