Google's Desktop Search Tool
Google has released a beta version of their desktop search tool here. The idea is to use the power of Google searches for finding information on your hard disk. As usual when a tool like this comes out, those concerned about the potential abuses of it are many. This thread on the Metafilter web site, presents a number of the arguments, both pro and con, about this tool. It's probably a good idea to read these comments so that you can make an informed judgment about whether you want to experiment with it or not.

After reviewing them, I have downloaded and installed it, and I am experimenting with using it. My first impressions are that it is very fast in pulling up information on my system. I have chosen not to allow it to send any information back to Google about my search habits, and I have excluded secure web sites from having Google index them. So from my perspective, I'm not really concerned about the information it may have indexed on my computer. In the preferences section, you can also exclude specific web sites where you don't want it to index the temporary Internet files, so there are safeguards there too, if you want to use them.

The only down side from my point of view is that it only indexes Outlook and Outlook Express emails, so because I use The Bat! as my email program the searches don't include my emails. For those who do use either of those two email programs, and there are a lot of people in that category, I would suspect that it would prove even more useful for you than it is for me. Also it will index AIM, AOL's instant messenger application, but it doesn't apparently index any of the other IM clients. Again, this is unfortunate from my point of view, simply because I don't use AIM.

Whether this is the right tool or not, the need it is designed to address is very real, so it will be interesting to watch what happens as companies compete to meet this need.
- posted by Perry @ 3:00 PM