Google Releases GDS 2.0

FansofTech writes "Google (now $4bn richer) has released v2.0 of Google Desktop. Many new features are introduced including improved Outlook filtering, Gmail indexing, and the feature which is most likely to cause the largest stir...a new Sidebar which displays RSS feeds, a Gmail inbox, news, scratch pad and more. Plug-ins for the new Sidebar are also available including a to-do list, clock, and more. As one blogger pointed out this morning...the release of Google Desktop 2.0 is beginning to take shape as a browser in itself as the need for a Firefox or IE is almost eliminated."

Comments

And most important of all

[Jarlsberg]

It finally supports indexing of files from network shares natively. :)

No XP64

[NetJunkie]

It won't install on XP 64-bit edition.

Bleh!

[Agret]

Google Desktop 2.0 is beginning to take shape as a browser in itself as the need for a Firefox or IE is almost eliminated.

Well it's a nice addition to the system but I don't think I'll replace Firefox with it. It'll take awhile for them to port extensions to the Google Desktop thing and even still it's not cross platform.

Windows Only?

[byronne]

Since this sounds so intriguing I thought I'd take a quick look-see. Go to the downloads and what do I see? "Currently available for Windows computers only"

I hope some of their new-found wealth goes toward developing some of these nifty tools for other platforms (Fedora? BSD? MAC?)...

Thunderbird mail!

[jfengel]

I've been waiting for it to index Thunderbird mail, because Thunderbird's search is pretty slow. It claims to do that now. Yay!

Something for a corporate environment?

[mr i want to go home]

I was pretty excited about the original Google Desktop for work - the projects we run have thousands of emails and documents, and the Google desktop search was turning out to be a goodsend for tracking old, but vital documents. However, there didn't seem to be any way to get the index out of a user's personal folders - which meant of course that the 1GB+ index files were getting written back to the server with each log-off.

I know Google have some Enterprise level appliances and tools...but we're only 25 people. That doesn't mean we don't generate butt loads of data - just that we can't afford the big kit. Google desktop would be great if it was just a bit more network friendly and configurable, but at the moment it seems targeted strictly for the home user.

I'm hoping that someone will tell me this version will prove me wrong, but I can't see anything to suggest that in the documentation yet...

Re:Something for a corporate environment?

[DCstewieG]

It was possible to change the location, but you had to do it in the registry. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop\data_dir

Re:Something for a corporate environment?

[David Horn]

What about the free Enterprise edition?

http://desktop.google.com/enterprise/download.html

I wish we could interface with Copernic D.S.

[JPamplin]

Anyone checked out Copernic Desktop Search? It really works better than the GDS format, for searchign local files and content.

If only Copernic could create something similar that interfaced with CDS. Oh well.

JP

List of plug-ins

[LoverOfJoy]

Here it is:
http://desktop.google.com/plugins/c/all.html

None of them stood out as very useful to me, but I can imagine they could be great for some people.

Re:Still useless

[oojah]

Try going to the preferences and "Search these locations" and you will be able to add drives to your hearts content.

Did you also know that it is possible to change where the "My Documents" virtual folder refers to? I have all of my data on a seperate drive so changed it to point to there.

Right click on the "My Documents" on your desktop and choose properties and you should see the details for changing the location.

Cheers,

Roger

Re:Help me out here

[jekk]

You can't get much more reliable than the contractually binding published privacy policy:

http://desktop.google.com/privacypolicy.html

To quote: "Your computer's content is not made accessible through Google Desktop to Google without your explicit permission."

-- Michael Chermside

Re:Sidebars

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make it auto hide its in the main menu

Re:Plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I wonder when Micorosoft will get around to allowing you to access your work email, tasks and todo list over the web?

Re:It still sits in the middle of your TCP stack

[King_B]

GDS does not sit inside the TCP/DNS stack. Instead, it appends a small string to your browser's user-agent string, which is read by google.com, and optionally shows the "Desktop" heading if present.

Re:Privacy Issues

[stefanlasiewski]

It wasn't too long ago that links on google.com went straight to the link... not back through the google servers...

This isn't new, and Yahoo does it also.

I remember playing with these rewritten links in 2001 for some SEO projects. Back in 1999, many of the links in Google appeared in the status bar as "http://www.google.com/url?url=http%3A//boingboing .net", so it was pretty obvious what they were doing.

This is how the big search engines determine which links are most popular.

The Holy Grail of Direct Marketing is to personalize advertisements efficiently. This is Google's whole business model.

To do this they collect information from the visitors, deposit the information in a huge database, analyze the data and then programatically determine which advertisements will be most effective based on the target audience.

Re:The Wrong Direction

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

People on Slashdot love claiming that MS has intentionally broken competitor's applications on Windows or DOS, but nobody is ever able to produce a single shred of actual evidence to support this claim. Sorry, but just because the claim is repeated thousands of times in a Google search result doesn't make it true.

In my opinion there is one real case, the DR-DOS / MS-DOS -battle. It's a long story, but as an example: A Microsoft manager wrote this about Win3.1 (to the win3.1 project manager if I recall correctly): "It's pretty clear we need to make sure Windows 3.1 only runs on top of MS DOS or an OEM version of it," and "[t]he approach we will take is to detect dr 6 and refuse to load. The error message should be something like 'Invalid device driver interface.'".

Microsoft tried multiple times to get the court to throw the case out before the actual trial, and when that didn't work they settled with Caldera for an undisclosed (but allegedly massive) sum of money. I guess one could argue that the case isn't clear because of that... but go read the court docs.

Re:Is it going to index my Outlook mail on Exchang

[URSpider]

I can't tell from my cursory review of the web page... So I'll ask here: The Google Desktop Search engine claims to index my "Outlook EMail." What does this mean? Does it contain an Exchange client? Is it going to sift through all my eleventy-million e-mails on my company's Exchange server

GDS indexes your Outlook mail by communicating directly with Outlook. It should index anything that's in an Outlook folder, including IMAP, POP, or Exchange mail. It doesn't have any ability to talk directly to your Exchange server, though if you don't keep a local copy of your mail, it's going to hit the server quite a bit as it retrieves each and every message in your Exchange folders and indexes them.

You should DEFINITELY check with your company network admin before you install GDS -- most of them are not big fans, because of the potential security risks.