Google's Desktop Search Tool

From WinInfo Short Takes:

Google to Deliver Desktop Search Tool

And speaking of Web-based trends that aren't as big as some people think, Google.com this week announced that it would soon release a desktop-based file search tool for Windows that will bring the company's Web-based search tools to the PC. Code-named Puffin, the search tool will tackle one of the weakest parts of Windows, its search functionality. And perhaps most important, it will do so at least two years before Microsoft ships Longhorn, the next major Windows version, which will allegedly fix this problem as well. As many a Microsoft representative has remarked to me recently, "Why does it take forever for Windows to find a file that I know is on my hard drive, but I can go to Google and find anything on the Web in seconds?" It's a good question, however rhetorically it's been delivered.

It will be very interesting to see if Google can deliver a PC file search solution that really works, isn't intrusive or bog down the PC, and doesn't invade user's privacy. It's not as easy a nut to crack as it might originally appear and Google's success on the web may not translate -- Google has rooms full of servers dedicated to task of returning your search results quickly and really only focuses on a small number of mostly plain-text file formats (Adobe Acrobat PDF being the main exception I know of). 

On PCs, you have a lot of different file formats (and a search tool that only works with a handful of the most popular formats will be of little value...at least to me) and a much lower tolerance for performance-bogging indexing (which is why Microsoft Office indexer is routinely turned off).

Here's hoping though. Fast keyword access to documents would a big plus.