Google Launches Desktop Search Beta

Google launched the Beta of its long anticipated Desktop Search tool for Windows this morning. The application acts as your own personal Google Server and indexes the contents your system by file name, or in the case of select file formats, by the contents of the file. It runs on Windows XP and Windows 2000 (with Service Pack 3).

The free download indexes the full text of email created in Outlook or Outlook Express, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, AOL Instant Messages, and caches the pages you view in Internet Explorer so you can revisit the page later "even if its live content has changed or you're offline."

On the email front, Desktop Search takes its lead from Google's Gmail. It organizes email searches into conversations, "so that all email messages in the same thread are grouped into a single search result." As far as the rest of the files on your system, MP3s, .JPGs, and all the rest, Desktop Search will index them by your file name.

Google maintains that no one but the end user has access to the information that Desktop Search indexes.

O'Reilly Media's Google Your Desktop is an excellent introduction to Google Desktop Search by Rael Dornfest, the co-author of Google Hacks.

According to The Register "Google Desktop Search is no match for existing premium products, of which the $199 dtSearch is probably the most accomplished."

You can download the Google Desktop Search Beta here.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.