Google Desktop is a desktop search software made by Google for Mac OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows. The program allows text searches of a user's e-mails, computer files, music, photos, chats, and Web pages viewed, and other "Google Gadgets".

Features

As of January 2008, Google Desktop features the following functionality:

File indexing

After initially installing Google Desktop, the software completes an indexing of all the files in the computer. After the initial indexing is completed the software continues to index files as needed. Users can start searching for files instantly after installing the program. After performing searches, results can also be returned in an Internet browser on the Google Desktop Home Page much like the results for Google Web searches.

As of October 2007, Google Desktop can index several different types of data, including email, web browsing history from Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, office documents in the OpenDocument and Microsoft Office formats, instant messenger transcripts from AOL, Google, MSN, Skype, Tencent QQ, and several multimedia file types. Additional file types can be indexed through the use of plug-ins. Google Desktop allows the user to control which types of data are indexed by the program.

Sidebar

A prominent feature of Google Desktop is the Sidebar, which holds several common Gadgets and resides off to one side of the desktop. As of January 2008, the Sidebar is available with the Microsoft Windows version of Google Desktop only. The Sidebar comes pre-installed with the following gadgets:

Email - a panel which lets one view one's Gmail messages.

Scratch Pad - here one can store random notes; they are saved automatically

Photos - displays a slideshow of photos from the "My Pictures" folder (address can be changed)

News - shows the latest headlines from Google News, and how long ago they were written. The News panel is personalized depending on the type of news you read.

Weather - shows the current weather for a location specified by the user.

Web Clips - shows recent posts from RSS news feeds.

Google Talk - If Google Talk is installed, double clicking the window title will dock it to one's sidebar.

Like the Windows Taskbar, the Google Desktop sidebar can be set to Auto-Hide mode, where it will only appear once the user moves the mouse cursor towards the side where it resides. If not on auto-hide, by default the sidebar will always take up about 1/6 - 1/9 of one's screen (depending on the screen resolution), and other windows are forced to resize. However, the sidebar can be resized to take less space, and you can disable the "always on top" feature in the options. With the auto-hide feature on, the sidebar temporarily overlaps maximized windows.

A further feature that comes with the Sidebar is alerts. When the Sidebar is minimized, new e-mail and news can be displayed on a pop-up window above the Windows Taskbar.

Quick Find

When searching in the sidebar, deskbar or floating deskbar, Google Desktop displays a "Quick Find" window. This window is filled with 6 (by default) of the most relevant results from your computer, which update as you type so you can get to what you want on your computer without having to open another browser window.

Deskbars

Deskbars are boxes which enable one to type in a search query directly from one's desktop. Web results will open in a browser window, and selected computer results will be displayed in the "Quick Find" box (see above). A Deskbar can either be a fixed deskbar, which sits in your Windows Taskbar, or a Floating Deskbar, which one may position anywhere one wants on one's desktop.

Email indexing

Google Desktop includes plugins that allow one to index and search through the contents of local Microsoft Outlook, IBM Lotus Notes, and Mozilla Thunderbird email databases, outside of the client applications' built-in search functions. For Lotus Notes, only local databases are indexed for searching. Google Desktop's email indexing feature is also integrated with Google's web-based email service, Gmail; it can index and search the email messages in one's Gmail account.

Gadgets & Plug-ins

Screenshot of gadgets

Desktop gadgets are interactive mini-applications that can be placed anywhere on the user's desktop – or docked in the Sidebar – to show new email, weather, photos, and personalized news. Google offers a gallery of pre-built gadgets for download on the official website. For developers, Google offers an SDK and an official blog for anyone who wants to write gadgets or plug-ins for Google Desktop. An automated system creates a developer hierarchy called the "Google Desktop Hall of Fame", where programmers can advance based on their gadgets' number and popularity.

The SDK also allows third-party applications to make use of the search facilities provided by Google Desktop Search. For example, the file manager Directory Opus offers integrated Google Desktop Search support.

Release history

Google Desktop was originally developed to bring Google search technology to the desktop. Google Desktop received much attention because it may allow reverse engineering of Google's proprietary search algorithm.Microsoft Windows

The first release of Google Desktop Search was released as a beta version on October 14, 2004.

Version 2 was released as a beta version on August 22, 2005. The new feature that distinguishes Desktop 2 from Desktop is the addition of Sidebar, a panel that displays personalized information, that can be placed on either side of the Windows desktop and can display real-time news, e-mail, photos, stocks, and weather, among others. Sidebar includes a search box that can search just the PC or Google's other search types (like Web, Images, News, Groups.) Google Desktop 2 graduated from beta on November 3, 2005. New features include a sidebar plug-in for Google Maps and more plug-in developer support.

Google Desktop 3 Beta was released on February 9, 2006. It includes support for searching multiple computers on a network. Google Desktop 3 graduated from beta on March 14, 2006. Notable in this version is the quick search box, which appears anywhere on your desktop after pressing "control" twice.

Google Desktop 4 Beta was released on May 10, 2006. It features Google Gadgets, modules that can deliver an array of information. It also introduces option to automatically remove deleted files from search results. Google Desktop 4 graduated from beta on June 27, 2006.

Google Desktop v4.5 was released on November 14, 2006, adding a transparency aesthetic to the sidebar and "floating" gadgets. The graphic interface of the sidebar was also enhanced with more stylized icons for news, stocks, weather, photos, etc. Release 4.5 also added support for Windows Vista.

Google Desktop 5 Beta was released on March 6, 2007.

Google Desktop v5.1 (the first post-Desktop 5 Beta release) is made available for download on 2007-04-27.

Google released Desktop v5.5 on 2007-10-02.Mac

On April 2007, Google released Desktop 1.0 for Mac OS X, that can function alongside the Spotlight search tool in Mac OS X v10.4.

On November 29, 2007, Google released Desktop v1.4.0.826 beta for Mac OS X, which plugs into Dashboard for Gadgets support.Linux

Google released Desktop 1.0 for Linux on June 27, 2007. It currently features the basic functionality of the Windows version but not the sidebar functionality.

Google adds 64-bit support to the Google Desktop for Linux with version 1.1.1.0075, which is made available for download on 2007-12-18.

Criticisms

Security

In February 2007, Yair Amit from Watchfire found a series of vulnerabilities in Google Desktop that could allow a malicious individual to achieve not only remote, persistent access to sensitive data, but in some cases full system control as well. The significant impact and the ease of exploitation forced Google to change some of Google Desktop's logic in Google Desktop version 5.

Privacy

Many privacy and civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have concerns that personal information on people's computers could readily be copied from users' hard drives.

Google Desktop V.3 contains certain features that raise serious security and privacy concerns. Specifically, the share across computers feature that introduces the ability to search content from desktop to desktop greatly increases the risk to users' privacy. If Google Desktop V.3 is set to allow Search Across Computers, files on an indexed computer are copied to Google's servers. The potential for information stored on their computers to be accessed by others if they enable this feature of Google Desktop V. 3 on their computers should be seriously considered. The EFF advises against using this feature. Also, those who have confidential data on their work or home computers should not enable this feature. There are privacy laws and company policies that could be violated through the installation of this feature, specifically, SB 1386, HIPAA, FERPA, GLBA and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Other more far reaching concerns arise around the packaging and end user license agreement - specifically the level of intrusion on the local machine and the disclaimers that users implicitly agree to future changes in the license agreement without actually being able to see them immediatly.

Resource use

Although there have been known problems with the GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe process, lately the presence of smart indexing has improved the use of resources so this is less of a problem now. As a default setting, after the user installs the application, files, emails and other data will be indexed at once, in a one-time process. It occurs only when the user's computer is idle for more than 30 seconds and it will typically be complete in several hours. After the one-time indexing, the index is kept up-to-date based on user actions and preferences.

Internationalization/Keyboard

Besides the key combination advertised on the preferences page (hitting Ctrl twice) Google Desktop's Quick Search Box can be launched with a shortcut Alt Gr + g, Alt Gr, however, is the standard key to input diacriticized letters on a QWERTY keyboard, e.g. Ģ/ģ in the Latvian language. Even though it can't be disabled on the preferences page, it can be done through editing the Windows Registry.

Outlook indexing

There had been some issues with Microsoft Outlook indexing . Deleted email listings are not removed and require re-installing Google Desktop for any new archived mail to be listed. Windows Desktop Search doesn't have this issue.