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Thread: Google Desktop

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    32

    Default Google Desktop

    link http://news.com.com/Google+unveils+d...65.html?tag=nl

    Google unveils desktop search

    Google on Thursday unveiled its first-generation desktop application for searching through personal files and Web history stored locally on a PC, a move that could shake up the landscape of Internet search and raise privacy hackles.

    "It's like photographic memory for your computer--if you've seen it before, you should be able to find it," said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products at Google.

    Rumored for months, Google's unveiling of desktop search trumps rivals Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online in the race to integrate Web navigation with PC search and stay on the cutting edge of search technology in people's minds. Desktop search has been earmarked a priority by all the major search engines, but among investors and analysts Microsoft has posed the biggest threat to Google's reign because of its dominance with the Windows operating system.

    Google has "not only beat their rivals to the punch, they've also changed the rules," said Danny Sullivan, a search industry pundit and editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. "They're saying, 'We're not making search part of the operating system, we're making the desktop part of Google.'"

    Still, Google may face challenges in the area of consumer privacy. Though Google will not have access to users' personal information on their desktop, the search tool will make personal files, including e-mail and AOL chat logs, viewable on their Web browser within seconds. That could prove embarrassing if someone else has access to the user's computer or is looking over the shoulder.

    "There will be privacy concerns because the tool's so close to you. Anything you do on your desktop will be recorded," said Charlene Li, an analyst at market research firm Forrester Research.


    How it works
    To use Google's desktop application, people download the file, which is a thin 400K, or about half the size of its toolbar application. (Users must have 128MB of memory installed on their PC, but the application uses only about 8MB.) The software then scans the hard drive in the background to index the full text of Word, Outlook e-mail, Excel files, text files, AOL chat logs, and saved Web pages from Internet Explorer--a process that typically takes between five and six hours. Then as the application runs, it indexes new documents and visited Web pages in real time.

    (People using Firefox and other browsers will not be able to record their Web history using the application.)

    Google Desktop is then seamlessly integrated with the Web browser; people with the software will see an extra tab for "desktop" when they visit Google.com. When a term such as "sailboat" is typed in the search box, Google will return a list of Web results and a set of desktop results at the top of the page, earmarked with a new logo that's like a multicolored Olympic ring.

    Under the desktop results, Google might show a previously viewed Web page on sailboats, an e-mail or AOL instant message mentioning boats, or a Word document. The index might also show a photo or MP3 file that was labeled with the word in it. (For now, Google does not index multimedia text, PDFs, Google's Gmail or other third-party e-mail clients.)

    Users can sort desktop results by date or file type. They can also set preferences to block certain files from being indexed or seen in search results.

    In recent weeks, Google's rivals have seemingly one-upped the search leader with new personalization and search tools that let people call up Web pages they've seen previously from a virtual archive. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and Amazon.com's A9.com have all unveiled technology for personalizing Web search, in what is essentially a bid to draw closer ties to their visitors.

    Now, Google will make the same overture to Web surfers, but with potentially more hooks. Its desktop application will keep a record of Web sites that a person visits, including a log of cached copies of each version of the Web page when it was viewed. This could be a powerful tool for allowing comparisons of previous versions of a Web site with the current page.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Maryland, USA
    Posts
    332

    Default

    huh... what will they think of next... :?

    Onward to the future! lol Well I guess that could be cool to be able to search your computer... but I think I'll just stick to the filesearch that came with Windows.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Aus
    Posts
    11

    Default

    yer and who is to say they wont post personell info on the internet for sale like email addresses windows registration codes and so-on :evil:

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