Google Desktop Search is Available Now!

Filed in: Google, Reviews — October 15th, 2004

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Google Desktop Search

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (Reuters) – Google Inc. on Thursday rolled out a preliminary version of its new desktop search tool, making the first move against its major competitors in the race to provide tools for finding information buried in computer hard drives.

Google Desktop allows users to search e-mail in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, chat threads in AOL Instant Messenger, as well as Web pages viewed in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It also helps users search plain text, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, among other things.

[ Read more @ Yahoo! News ]

IMMEDIATELY, I downloaded and installed it! Of course, I also give you my first hand review of Google Desktop Search! Read on!

Google Desktop Search Screenshots

Google Desktop Search Homepage
Google Desktop Search Homepage [google.com]

Google Desktop Search results
Google Desktop Search results [google.com]

More Google Desktop official screenshots…

Google Desktop Search Review
Google Desktop download size is very small(only 400KB) and installation is easy. No configuration needed. Once installed, a colorful trayicon will sit in windows system tray and launchs default browser to load Google Desktop Search homepage.

There is no lacking or any slowdown from installation until Google Desktop loads, but it already indexed over 700 items(167 emails, 84 web history, and 473 files) on my computer! That’s fast!

Google search showing result found in different types
Google Desktop Search shows result found in different types

Google Desktop Search display files found using the associated programs but display emails found in the browser. To my surprise, emails can view by conversation(thread)!

Google Desktop Search showing emails thread
Google Desktop Search shows emails thread

But, I found that only newsgroup messages will be threaded, not for normal emails. If it is not due to incomplete file indexing(since this is first run), I wish it will works like Gmail’s email thread.

For web history result, it looks exactly same as normal Google search, except that you are searching your “Internet Explorer” web history. One of my local saved HTML file is CACHED, and it really shows the older version of the file! Wow! So scary! :shock:

For the Chat search, since I do not use AIM, I cannot test it…

If you worry about Google Desktop Search file indexing process will cause performance drop, I can tell you that no performance drop being detected on my OLD Pentium box. Basically. it only works when you are not using your PC. :)

Google Desktop Search Download:
http://desktop.google.com/

Thought:
In a nutshell, Google Desktop Search is performing well. However, the search area seems to be limited to Microsoft sofwares files. Google Desktop Search is almost useless for me, since I do not use Outlook, AIM and Internet Explorer.

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Vote for Google Desktop Search Mozilla Firefox Support »
  • dat's cool. hv patience. it's only beta version now ;)
  • i have try this its really cool but just too bad it cant use for firefox. but i think sooner n later la. just the matter of time.
  • wits0
    It's only for Windows XP.:roll:
    Another thing OT, FireFox suddenly refuse to lauch on my System while all other browsers(6) work fine.
    Just stuck in memory. After 4 tries of uninstalling and installing , ie., Previously was okay. Checked with
    System Mechanic - nothing shows up awry.
    Very mysterious. Also my Win 98's "Reboot to Dos" button is missing.
  • LcF
    wits0: try to remove your Firefox Profile and start with new one. For my experience, it may caused by corrupted profile.
  • wits0
    Indeed it was the profile matter LcF. Why didn't I suspect that! Not that I haven't heard about it(hahahha):oops:....the starting of FireFox with that /p command. Thanks. Yet all my meandering in error wasn't entirely fruitless...got new valid replacement files like that oleaut32.dll latest etc.

    Btw, I've successfully installed Copernic Desktop Search in place of Google Search Beta which I found is unsuitable for Win 98SE. No time to check it out in dead earnest. Perhaps you could compare and give us your comparision/conclusion? http//www.copernic.com ?:smile:
  • I thought you might be interested in a smart organizer tool as well. We integrated our smart organizer with GDS as the search functionality. The Smart organizer automatically puts companies, contacts, emails, files, and browser favorites into an organized set of trees that you can add new content to by searching in GDS. Take a look at the beta of our new version at www.viapoint.com/downloads/viapointgds.exe if you are interested.

    Dan Housman
    dhousman@viapoint.com
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