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

surprise, surprise

[buxton4]

Surprise surprise another google story, ow much arey paying you /.?

Wow, who uses this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone? Show of hands?

Re:Wow, who uses this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welp this sounds bad, it's a toolbar that can add itself to your firefox. Great,,,,, :-(
And it's opensource. Even better, :-(
Now how long is it going to be before the spyware/adware companies get ahold of this source code, and start using it to manipulate firefox.
Great Job...

Computer Science?

[Anonymous Coward]

Computer science? Most of you are just fucking code monkies.

Dear Google

[Letter]

Dear Google,

Please let me be the first to congratulate you on advancing one of your projects past the "beta" stage.

Love,
Letter

Re:google: the next Msft?

[stratjakt]

I agree.

Google has stated that their goal is to become the worlds biggest advertising service. They work around the clock to try and slip ads onto my computer without me noticing, or getting upset.

Why am I supposed to like them, exactly?

Frankly I prefer the honesty of a spam, or a flashing and blinking popup with audio, to what Google's doing. At least I know the spammers intent. I'm not sure what Google is trying to do.

GMail, no thanks. I DO NOT WANT CONTEXT-RELATED ADS EMBEDDED INTO MY EMAIL. Desktop Search, no thanks: I DO NOT WANT CONTEXT-RELATED ADS EMBEDDED INTO MY DESKTOP. I don't care if they're "non intrusive" or "text only".

My desktop is not for sale as advertising space. If it were, then the revenue generated from it should be MINE, not Googles.

Re:Is Microsoft out of the loop?

[stratjakt]

Betcha WinFS wont want to embed context-related ads into my search results.

We call that malware or spyware when other companies do it. Gator Desktop Search maybe.

Re:Why? Whats it for? Whats it do

[stratjakt]

Windows built in search is shitty for finding content inside files, and Outlook is shitty at finding content inside emails.

Define shitty.

Windows built in search found the .c and .h files I mentioned earlier. And, as I said in another response to this thread, I just tried searching my 700MB plus outlook mailbox.pst file, and it took 29 seconds to return a few thousand results.

Google did not index my outlook mailbox at all. Unless this is a new feature.

I should also mention that Outlook did not present me with any context sensitive ads. I guess GDS is great if you complain about the lack of advertisments embedded in your personal data.

So far, thats the only feature I see that it has. Ads. Aside "speed", and really, searching even a completely full 80 gig HDD by walking through every file/dir with a simple VBScript doesn't take more than a couple minutes.

You want to know what the catch is?

[bonch]

I don't trust Google.

Google sets a cookie that:
1.) Tracks your IP.
2.) Tracks your usage.
3.) Doesn't expire until 2038.

Google's privacy policies state that:
1.) Any information on you is fair game.
2.) They will happily turn over any information they have on you at any government request.
3.) Your Gmail may reside on their servers indefinitely, even after you delete it. This may also be "indexed" on their servers and the contents read at any time.

Google also employs an ex-CIA guy with top secret security clearance in the government.

I don't want to know what Google might suddenly do with the indexed contents of a hard drive, but their policies state they'll turn over anything to the government. So what's to stop the government from going on an anti-terrorism binge and asking for whatever the hell they want? They'll have every search term you've ever done (think of the crazy shit you've searched for late on a Saturday night), every e-mail you've ever read and sent, and the indexed contents of your hard drive.

Um, no thanks.

People have fallen for Google without reading between the lines, and Google even invented a cute little slogan ("Don't be evil") to appear nicer than they are.

Call me paranoid, but I don't buy it. I refuse to use any service from a company whose policies don't protect my privacy and will hand over anything they want and index files even after I delete them from their servers. It's crazy.

Not to mention their search results have sucked since 2003, but that's totally beside the point.