I know I’m at risk of starting to sound like a bit of a stuck record when it comes to Google, but I needed to blog Google Desktop. Its a really simple concept – Google searching your own machine – which I think will become as ubiquitous as their internet search engine.
They’re in early days with at the moment – it only works on Windows, only searches specific extensions of files (e.g. I’d like to search other plain text files, not just ‘.txt’), only searches Internet Explorer (I’d like it to search Firefox), etc., but you can see where they’re going.
What will be interesting to see is how this fits in with the new Search functionality coming out in Longhorn.
Surely its only (another) matter of time before they release a server application people can install on their Corporate LANs to do the same kind of thing (which Google Desktop could talk to, maybe – perhaps called ‘Google Enterprise’?). They already have the Google Appliance, but I think companies would be happier to install software on their own kit than use a totally separate piece of hardware. The software could sit next to any corporate version of GMail!!
Anyway, go get Google Desktop, try it out, and send them feedback.
Mike Roberts 