No Google Desktop Search for Mac?
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Tim O'Reilly, open source advocate and founder of O'Reilly Media, has disputed a report by Reuters stating that Google plans to bring its Desktop Search utility to Apple's Mac OS X. O'Reilly -- who asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt whether not to expect a Mac version during a conference at UCLA -- said in a posting to Ars Technica that Schmidt only explained it was a hard problem due to operating system differences. "He made no announcement of actual plans to deliver the product, or even that Google was actively working on it," said O'Reilly.
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Copernic Updates Desktop Search Tool  Copernic continues to challenge both Microsoft and Google in the battle for desktop search supremacy today by announcing the immediate availability of Copernic Desktop Search (CDS) 1.1, a new and improved version of its critically-acclaimed desktop search product. CDS enables users to instantly search their personal ...
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Google Desktop Search is an amazing little tool. It allows you to search your computer more quickly, completely and intuitively than Windows&#39; search feature.
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(InfoWorld) - As this year's WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) approaches, Apple fans are furiously speculating on what kind of news will be dropped on us in San Francisco. We already know about the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard preview, and no doubt Apple CEO Steve Jobs will have something to say about the iPhone. But from what I know about the players and the IT landscape, I think Jobs has another "just one more thing" up his sleeve. I've been looking at what Apple and its partners need to do to fill gaps in their product line-up. At the moment, I think the Macintosh platform's biggest weakness is its reliance on Microsoft Office for productivity software. Microsoft has always built solid products for Mac -- but they were always just a bit behind or somehow incompatible with their Windows equivalents. Entourage does 90 percent of what Outlook does, but it lacks features right where it hurts: In enterprise settings. Word for Mac doesn't have the same Macro or OOXML support as the PC version. PowerPoint files are still not 100 percent compatible between platforms. Basically, Apple and its customers get the short end of the Microsoft stick. Add to that the industry move toward Web 2.0 applications and Cloud computing -- and a number of other recent shifts in the technology landscape -- and you have a climate for change. I don't think Apple wants to wait on Microsoft to delegate how its business applications will work. In fact, I think Apple would like to move forward with a leading-edge partner like, say, Google and create business rather than follow in it. That's why I think Jobs will take the stage at WWDC next week and announce that Apple and Google are going to team up to bring Google Apps to .Mac customers. Let's connect some dots and see what picture emerges: In a recent stockholder meeting, Jobs admitted that .Mac has hasn't achieved its full potential but said the company is working on it. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and a member of the Apple Board, has said there are a lot of Apple-Google partnerships to come because both companies have "common competitors." Hmmmm. Microsoft is a common competitor, and its bread and butter -- aside from Windows -- is Office. We've already seen a flurry of Google Applications for Macintosh, plus GMaps and Gmail on the iPhone, so why not Google Docs and Spreadsheets integrated into .Mac? Seems like a perfect fit. Using iChat as a guide, we know that another network -- AOL -- allowed .Mac users to use their own xxx@mac.com address as their AOL Instant Messenger screen name. Google could do the same thing in Apps. Perhaps the whole mac.com domain would be ported to Google Apps. Google has lots of cheap, fast space. It also has the ability and desire to search it and advertise on it (monetize it). Gmail has won the battle against .Mac's mail for most Macintosh users. As for calendar/IM/address book integration, disk space, and spam detection, Google wins most of the battles hands down. Google spends $5 per domain for Apps users through its Adsense subsidiary. It wants more non-paying users, and Apple would be happy to offload its .Mac users. Those users, who pay $100 a year as .Mac members, could get a premium version of Google Apps with desktop backups and larger file space as well as the benefits they currently enjoy. Apple's focus is on hardware and software. It should -- and should want to -- stick with what it does best. We know that iChat in Leopard has a special account preference for GTalk accounts. Of course, you can currently use any Jabber server in iChat -- GTalk is based on Jabber -- but it's interesting that Apple has split off GTalk from the rest of the Jabber servers. It has been 18 months, forever in software development at Apple, since the iWork app was last updated. That is lots of time for Apple to do some pretty interesting things. I would love to see Apple enter the Blog editing game, where MarsEdit, Ecto, and Journaler are sweeping up. Such a move would be a serious game changer for the fight on the Mac platform between Apple's Pages and Microsoft's Word. And for Google, what better way to get into blog editing than with its Writley technology? Google needs a Keynote type of presentation tool; Apple needs a spreadsheet tool to round out their Office competition. Each has what the other needs. Throw Sun's OpenOffice.org into the mix. The first native Alpha release of this software came out this week. Both Apple and Google have been playing very nice with Sun lately. iWork. The most important piece of the puzzle might just be iWork, which could be a caching front end for Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Use it when you are on an airplane, at grandma's house with no Internet, in the subway, or wherever Internet access is spotty. Or how about this curveball: Apple could port its iWork and iLife applications to Windows? Quicktime and iTunes already enjoy a large following in the Windows camp. Woo them with the apps, win them over to the OS. Oh, and one more thing. I realize we're flopping off of the deep end here, but what if Apple were to sell a Leopard virtual machine for Windows that functions like Parallels in Coherence mode (except you'd have the Mac OS running in Windows, not the other way around)? The result: Run Leopard anywhere! You could even boot from a Google hosted OS. This need not be a full version, mind you, but a stripped down, embedded version of the Mac OS like what's being thrown into Apple TV and the iPhone. One of the great things about virtualization is that there's less need for drivers and such, which makes installing small Google or Apple apps on your Windows desktop easier. Okay, that scenario could be years away, or never to be. But I think there is every chance that we'll hear something about .Mac integration with Google Apps next week. It makes sense for all parties and would finally give Microsoft a run for its money. Plus, there's that old saying: the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Seth Weintraub is a global IT management consultant specializing in the technology needs of creative organizations, including The Paris Times, Omnicom and WPP Group. He has set up and managed cross-platform networks on four continents and is an expert in Active Directory/Open Directory PC and Macintosh integration.
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Google is famed for its Web search engine, but over the past few years it has acquired a different role: Microsoft's No. 1 foreign aid donor. First, Google fixed some of Internet Explorer's worst defects with its Google Toolbar, a free add-in that blocks pop-up ads and provides a shortcut to (naturally) Google's search engine and an auto-fill option to complete Web forms. Now it has released the Google Desktop, another free program that fixes an equally glaring weakness of Windows: its woeful file-searching capabilities.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has complained to federal antitrust officials that the search tool in Microsoft'sÂ Windows VistaÂ Â discourages customers from using its own search utility, the company confirmed Sunday. Stories posted to the Web sites of The New York Times (registration required)Â and theÂ Seattle Post-IntelligencerÂ SaturdayÂ first revealedÂ that Google's complaint centered on Vista's built-in desktop search software, dubbed Instant Search. According to both newspapers, Google accused Microsoft of designing Vista to discourage users from running its indexing and search software. On Sunday, Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes confirmed the charge. "Microsoft's current approach with Vista desktop search violates its agreement with the government and hurts consumers." he said in an e-mail to Computerworld. "The search boxes built throughout Vista are hard-wired to Microsoft's own desktop search product, with no way for users to choose an alternate provider from these visible search access points. Likewise, Vista makes it impractical to turn off Microsoft's search index." According to postings on Microsoft's support forums, the only way to completely disable Vista's search is to stop the Windows Search service in the Microsoft Management Console. Microsoft disputed Google's charges. "We've been working with state and federal antitrust officials for the past two years to ensure that there are no problems with any of the features in Windows Vista," said company spokesman Jack Evans. "These desktop search issues were reviewed at length with regulators prior to the release of Windows Vista and resulted in more than a dozen changes at their request." Even so, Microsoft will consider more changes to Vista, Evans added. "While we donât believe there are any compliance concerns with desktop search, we are committed to going the extra mile to resolve this issue, so long as the changes Google is requesting do nothing to undermine the privacy and security of computer users." During aÂ March 2007 hearingÂ conducted by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the 2002 Microsoft consent decree, the government's status report noted that a complaint had been filed, but did not identify the company. "At the last status conference, plaintiffs reported that they had just received a middleware-related complaint," theÂ status reportÂ read. "Since then, plaintiffs have been investigating this complaint, including obtaining significant additional information from Microsoft and the complainant." Google had previously raised concerns about search in Microsoft'sÂ Internet Explorer 7Â browser with federal officials. In May 2006, however,Â federal officials rebuffed Google, saying that IE 7 users could easily switch search providers and that computer makers could set the default search engine in IE 7 before shipping systems. Google has also filed similar complaints over search in both IE 7 and Vista with the European Union's antitrust commission. Those complaints have not been settled. According to The New York Times, the U.S. Department of Justice refused to pursue the Google complaint, andÂ Thomas Barnett,Â the assistant U.S. attorney general for antitrust, sent a memo to numerous state attorneys general in May asking them to also reject the complaint. Prosecutors in several of those states, however, have reportedly decided to investigate the Google concerns whether the federal government goes along or not, a decision that has Barnett reconsidering the agency's position. E-mails and phone calls asking several of the states involved with the 2004 Microsoft settlement to comment were not returned Sunday. Barnett's division will present its next report on Microsoft's progress in meeting the 2002 settlement to Kollar-Kotelly in a hearing scheduled for June 26. Â
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I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Googleâs new Desktop Search program works great on a hard disk full of old e-mails and downloaded Web pages.
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Google&#39;s new Desktop Search software is a muscle car among search engines, racing through personal data stored inside your computer to instantly find things you can&#39;t easily locate.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has released a new version of its desktop search tool, adding a preview feature to help find information more quickly and making some improvements to the interface design. The update, Google Desktop Version 5, also has some new security features to fight phishing and other online attacks. Its release comes after security researchersÂ reported some security holesÂ in the search tool last month. Google Desktop is a free tool that indexes the content on a PC, including e-mail, text documents and Web pages visited, and makes it available for searching. It also includes "gadgets," or small applications that sit on the desktop and display news headlines, a calendar, a to-do list and other information. MicrosoftÂ and Yahoo offer competing tools, here and here. A search in Google Desktop produces a list of results, including the file name and a snippet of the text. Several results can sometimes look similar, so Google has added a preview tool in version 5 that can show the contents of a file without having to launch the application it was created with, it said. The update also aims to fight phishing and malicious code hidden in Web sites. If a user clicks on a Web link in an email or other document, the new Google Desktop will alert the user if it thinks the Web site is going to try to steal information or download malicious code. Version 5 also updates the sidebar, a vertical control panel on the left of the screen. It can now "sample" the color of wallpaper on a PC and change its color to blend in, Google said. It also updates the appearance of the gadgets to make them easier to sort through and view. The new version, which is still in beta like a lot of other Google software, was announced Tuesday in the Google Desktop Blog. Google Desktop has come under fire from security researchers in recent weeks. In February, researchers at Watchfire said they'd found a flaw that could allow attackers to read files or run unauthorized software on systems running Google Desktop.Â Google patched the flaw, but the researchers said the software could be vulnerable to similar threats in the future. They reported a second flaw later in the month, and Google began investigating it. Google is also trying to enter the broader desktop productivity market. Last month it launched a suite of Web-based software called Google Apps Premier Edition, which analysts say could become a competitor to Microsoft Office. Â
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Ask Jeeves Introduces Yet Another Desktop Search Tool  Ask Jeeves yesterday joined Microsoft in introducing a beta desktop search application. Ask Jeeves states that its Desktop Search makes it easy for people to find information on their computers or the Internet. Upon installation of the small (750K) application, Ask Jeeves Desktop ...
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MICROSOFT has launched a new desktop search tool that allows personal computer users to find documents or messages on their PCs. The new search tool, launched in the wake of a similar effort from Google, appears on the task bar in Microsoft Windows.
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Ask Jeeves yesterday joined Microsoft in introducing a beta desktop search application. Ask Jeeves states that its Desktop Search makes it easy for people to find information on their computers or the Internet.
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Internet search leader Google Inc. yesterday introduced Google Desktop Search, a free program that creates an index of the files on a user&#39;s own computer.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.  - Google Inc. GOOG.O on  Thursday rolled out a preliminary version of its new desktop  search tool, making the first move against its major  competitors in the race to provide tools for finding  information buried in computer hard drives.
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(InfoWorld) - Google launched a Linux version of Google Desktop on Wednesday, almost three years after the product's launch for the Windows operating system. The application, designed for indexing and finding data in PCs, as well as for searching the Web, also comes in a Mac OS X version, introduced in April of this year. Like the Mac OS X version, Google Desktop for Linux is a beta, or test, product. The Windows version shed its beta tag already, meaning Google considers it a more stable and mature product. At this point, Google Desktop for Linux does not feature the Sidebar and Gadget features present in the Windows version. Gadgets are mini-applications that display things such as e-mail, weather data, photos, and news on the desktop. The Sidebar is a vertical panel where the Gadgets can be organized. This Linux version, developed by Google's Beijing engineering team, is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese. Google Desktop for Linux runs on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, and Red Flag 5. Users can download it for free fromÂ this Web site.
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Google released a new Google Desktop Search tool today that allows people to scan their computers for information in the same way they use Google to search the web. Its ease of use, plus how it enhances the Google search experience, make it a compelling product to use.
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[Technology India]: London, Oct 15: If you frequently waste a lot of time searching for files on your PC, help is at hand for Google has released a preliminary version of a desktop program that will search computer hard drives, as well as the web.