Google Typo Leads To Speculation About 1... >>
<< Yahoo Releases Anti-Spam Technique For...
 tdicon 

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Tue, May 18th 2004 11:45pm





Google To Launch Desktop Search Tool

from the well...-um...-of-course? dept

I assume this will surprise all of about three or four people who haven't been paying attention, but Google is preparing to launch a desktop search tool that will let you search through your own hard drive (in exchange, I assume, for contextual ads). The press will make a big deal about this and how it's a way for them to challenge Microsoft's Longhorn offering, which will have greatly improved local search. I'm not sure it's that interesting. Longhorn is so far off that it's really not worth speculating whether or not this product actually competes with it or not. The more interesting question is, if this local search tool involves contextual ads, will the privacy folks start complaining again that Google is now snooping through your hard drive?

8 Comments | Leave a Comment

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  •  
    identicon
    Nonesuch, May 18th, 2004 @ 11:55pm

    Desktop search?

    It'll be very interesting to see what advantages, if any, Google can offer in searching locally stored documents.

    Most of google's focus and technology today is in the ability to "spider" the internet, find relationships between documents, and extract the valuable information from mounds of junk and intentional attempts to increase the "page rank" of certain sites.

    It's not clear to me how any of that technology translates to searching the local drive. Personally, I'm going to stick with Start->Search->For Files or Folders (or "find / -type f -print |xargs egrep ..." in Unix).

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

    •  
      identicon
      Beck, May 19th, 2004 @ 5:31am

      Re: Desktop search?

      This will probably spider your hard drive and index the contents of your files, similar to the Google search appliance that you can run on your corporate servers.

      I wonder if someone will create a "lite" version, similar to Kazaa Lite, that doesn't serve ads?

       

      [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  •  
    identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, May 19th, 2004 @ 6:50am

    Will it search through PDF files?

    We're starting to run into an issue at work of not being able to find information because we have it stored in PDF files and haven't been able to find a convenient way to search through a hard drive full of PDF files for the right one, short of opening each one manually and performing a search.

    If this new Google product will search through PDF files, I'll be sure to get it.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  •  
    identicon
    slim, May 19th, 2004 @ 7:49am

    Rest assured Mike ...

    .... corporations REQUIRE Google to do this well. And if they do, the amount of money they make selling text ads will .. well, amount to chump change.

    Why has it take Google so long to figure out that, while surfing HTML pages on the web is certainly useful ... being able to do the same type of search on my LAN (searching just my hard drive would be pointless since the only thing ON my hard drive are operating system files) would be INVALUABLE.

    In other words, I WILL PAY A LOT OF MONEY for this capability, if it is executed properly.

    Also, I will buy GOOGOL's of shares of stock (hope I don't get sued for using that word.)

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  •  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, May 19th, 2004 @ 9:50am

    Another idea retread.

    Alta Vista years ago offered a free program that could do this. No ads either. They unfortunately discontinued it when they decided to focus on being a "portal" rather than a search engine.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  •  
    identicon
    Byron Prather, Oct 14th, 2004 @ 12:06pm

    Google Announces Desktop Search

    This is now a reality. It's very cool and does not serve up context ads. Check out my review here:
    http://www.byronprather.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=fd7871d8-65c6-4462-92d2-bd5a417d3adb

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Google Typo Leads To Speculation About 1... >>
<< Yahoo Releases Anti-Spam Technique For...
 tdicon 
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss
A word from our Sponsors...
Sponsored Resource
Essential Reading
Techdirt Reading List
Techdirt Insider Chat

A word from our Sponsors...
Recent Stories

Saturday

12:00pm: Sophisticatedjanedoe / FightCopyrightTrolls Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week (39)
9:00am: Awesome Stuff: Cool Product Designs (7)

Friday

7:39pm: Rice University Professor: SkyNET's Gonna Take Ur Jerbs! (55)
6:33pm: Make Art, Not Law (8)
5:27pm: AP's Attempt At DRM'ing The News Shuts Down (13)
5:00pm: DailyDirt: DIY Junk Food (3)
3:40pm: Suburban Express Goes Double Or Nothing On Their Aggressive Behavior (7)
2:34pm: Want To Destroy Any Hope Of Serious Cybersecurity? Give The DOJ Its Desired Backdoor Wiretaps On All Communications (20)
1:34pm: Nintendo Exchanges Goodwill For Control; Issues Mass Monetization Claims On Let's Play Videos (31)
12:32pm: Indian Publishing Firm Can't Take A Little Criticism, Threatens Blogger With $1 Billion Lawsuit, Criminal Charges (13)
More arrow
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This