MarineCorps
Explosion!
Google Inc. released a free tool today that lets people simultaneously search the Web and their personal computers for information, a move analysts described as a potential blow to rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. in the race to woo searchers and dominate the hottest area of online advertising.
Google's new "desktop search" software offers what Microsoft has been trying to develop for more than a year -- the ability to let people enter one search term and see files relevant to that topic from both their computers and the Web displayed together.
"This gives Google a huge first-mover advantage in desktop search," said Charlene Li, principal search analyst for Forrester Research, a market research firm. She predicted the tool would be especially popular with heavy computer users, who store many files on their machines and need help sifting through them.
"It's ironic that until now, it's been easier to search six billion documents on the Internet than it has been to find a single file on your hard drive," Li said.
Google's new software, available as a free download at http://desktop.google.com, not only indexes the full text of e-mail messages and word processing documents, but also gives people the option of creating a searchable archive of all Web pages they visit and all instant messages they send and receive with AOL software.
"The goal for the application was for it to behave like a photographic memory for your computer," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products. "So in addition to being able to search all of the files on your computer, it also indexes the Web pages you have seen."
Mayer said Google's research shows that computer users want to find information swiftly, but they typically do not remember where they saw it, leading the company to develop a product that searches the Internet, e-mails, Instant Messages, and desktop files stored on a personal computer simultaneously.
The new Google product is the company's first major innovation since its initial public offering in August, when it sold shares to investors for $85-a-share. Yesterday, Google stock closed at $140.90, up $3.50.
Analysts who tested the software say it is simple and fast, partly because it operates the same way Google does on the World Wide Web, by creating an index of the files it finds in advance and then searching that index when someone enters a query. That makes it speedier than the approach used by the search tool built into Microsoft's Windows operating system, which does no indexing and must inspect the original files each time it gets a query.
Google's new product is "very, very good," said Danny Sullivan, editor of searchenginewatch.com, an online newsletter that tracks the search engine industry. Sullivan said he has been testing Google's search tool and found one of its most useful features to be the way that it stored a copy of all the pages he visited online and then made that personal Web surfing history available to him.
"One of the more compelling things to me is it improves your Web searching," said Sullivan. He said he previously had been skeptical of Microsoft's declared intention to offer people a unified searching ability, combining files found on the computer with documents from the Web. "This leaves me feeling that integrated search really is useful," he said.
Google's release of the product ahead of Microsoft poses a problem for the Redmond, Wash., software giant, Sullivan said, because the personal archiving capability likely will grow more valuable to users over time, making it harder to switch to another search engine product: "You may not want to give up that recorded history you have."
While Microsoft has been promising to develop and release a new search product that would make it faster for users to find information on their personal computers, the company has pushed back its timetable. Yesterday, Microsoft officials said they would have a new desktop search tool within a year.
"Our focus is on helping consumers get faster, cleaner and easier access to the information they want, not on what other companies are doing," said Justin Osmer, product manager for Microsoft's MSN division. "We plan to offer desktop search with updates to our existing service within the next year."
Microsoft already offers the Lookout Personal Search Tool, which facilitates searches for millions of computer users who use Microsoft Outlook. But the company does not have a way for computer users to simultaneously search desktop files and information on the Internet.
"Customers want search capabilities that help them access information no matter where it resides, across the Internet, their P.C., the intranet and e-mail," Osmer said. "This is a big challenge. . . . Microsoft and the rest of the industry have only scratched the surface on how search technology can help consumers."
Google's desktop search only works on computers running Windows, specifically Windows XP and Windows 2000, and indexes the full text of only certain documents, including those created in Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs, Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. With other files, such as photographs and music, it simply indexes the names of files.
People who install the desktop software can run Google searches a number of different ways -- looking for files stored only on their computers, for files stored only on the Internet or for a mixture of both.
Google, which makes its money showing ads related to queries, said it plans to show no advertising when users search only for files on their local computers, at least not while the product is in its test or "beta" stage. However, Google will show ads on results pages when someone chooses to see results from both the Web and their computer together, according to Mayer.
The company is proceeding cautiously with regard to privacy, given the uproar over the issue created earlier this year when it introduced a its G-mail product, which placed ads beside e-mails.
Mayer said early testing of the product shows that most people will use it to search the Internet and their personal computers for information simultaneously, which will add to the number of Internet searches done through Google. "As a result, we will serve more Web results pages and more ads, and those ads have more chances of getting clicked on. So there will be incremental Web search revenue from this product," Mayer said.
Once the Google search technology is installed for free on a personal computer, it will transmit basic data daily about usage patterns. For example, it will tell the company how often Google is being used to search personal computers, how often it is used to search the Web, and how often simultaneous searches are done. Google lets users opt out of sending some usage data, but not all of it.
However, Mayer said the data collected will be aggregated so that the company knows where to focus its efforts on upgrading the search technology. She emphasized that the daily up-loading will not transmit any personal information to Google and said it is typical for major software programs that offer voluntary upgrades and fixes for bugs to capture that sort of information as a matter of routine.
"This is the most personal information Google has ever dealt with," Mayer said of the new desktop search technology. "We take user privacy and user trust very seriously. And we have throughout the entire development of this product."
To enable users to maintain the confidentiality of files on their personal computers, or to permit them to keep their Web surfing destinations a secret, the new desktop search tool lets people block it from archiving visits to specific Internet sites, or from accessing private or confidential information stored on a P.C. In addition, there is a 15-minute snooze bar that allows a user to temporarily turn the archiving feature off if, for example, someone wants to do online shopping for a family member or friend and keep it a secret.
Gary Price, a search specialist who runs a Web reference site called ResourceShelf.com, noted that the new archiving capability could raise privacy issues by making it easier for people to search and find material on other people's computers when they step away from their desks. That could be troubling in the workplace where people often leave their desks unattended, he said: "In a couple of minutes, people can search your entire computer and find anything in any one of your documents."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32109-2004Oct14_2.html
Die M$ Die!!!!!
http://desktop.google.com/ For the DL.
I love google. 
I have a friend who would use it all the time if it wasn't for the fact that games don't really run on it that great. I know it's gui never used to be terribly friendly, but from what I know, it's been changing. 
