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Google to Launch Mac Version of Google Desktop UPDATED
Posted by
michael
on Sat Oct 30, 2004 07:14 AM
from the still-waiting-for-debian-package dept.
from the still-waiting-for-debian-package dept.
phaedo00 writes "Arstechnica is reporting that Google today announced that they are pursuing a Google Desktop for Apple's Mac OS X. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt saying it had to be rebuilt from the ground up because of the fundamental differences between the Mac OS and Windows. 'We intend to do it,' Schmidt said." Update: 10/30 23:51 GMT by M : Seems like Reuters and others may have heard wrong about a potential Mac version.
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Google to Launch Mac Version of Google Desktop UPDATED
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Spotlight? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Spotlight? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Spotlight? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Typical Apple Fanatic's Take... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.spinningatom.com/)
I'm a Mac user, and on one hand I quite agree that this competition is good for us - Google's program is good and motivates Spotlight to be better, and Dashboard vs Konfabulator promises to force innovation from both sides. OTOH though, Google, Apple and Pixoria are all excellent software makers and if each focused on things that weren't being done by the others it would be an overall gain in the quantity of useful software without much of a quality hit since these people all have a history of doing things well much of the time, competition or none.
I don't really know what the optimum balance would be here, but I don't think that Google have quite hit it - I just feel that they're misdirecting their time on things that are already being done well by Apple, just as Apple are wasting their time on things that are already being done well by Pixoria.
Re:Typical Apple Fanatic's Take... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.freeke.org/ffg | Last Journal: Saturday January 25 2003, @08:05PM)
Disclaimer: I've used GDS beta on Windows, and I've used Spotlight on the Tiger WWDC preview. I'm sure what both companies will offer in sucessive versions will be more advanced.
GDS on Windows is a nice idea that's limited by the small number of data formats that it supports. The only file formats it understands are the ones specifically baked into it by Google. There is no way (at current) for a developer to add support for custom file formats, nor does it give you any way to exploit the metadata already present in many very common file formats (e.g. JPEG, PNG, MP3, etc.) In other words, if I had a 1024x768 picture of a Porsche 911 called "Porsche 911.jpg" on my HD, I could find it with GDS by searching for "porsche" or "911" or ".jpg". On the plus side, the formats that Google already knows about (eg AIM logs, Outlook [gack] emails) are well-supported.
Spotlight, however, indexes the inbuilt metadata as well, so not only could I search on parts of the filename, as above, I could also search for "picture files that are 1024 x 768" or have "epson" in their EXIF tags. In addition, if I write a graphics app and use "marmoset's magnificent graphics format" (MMGF) as my native storage format, I can write a Spotlight plugin that tells the OS how to understand the "underpants gnome" tags I've embedded in the images.
Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, most of the world doesn't care, so it wouldn't be likely 2 happen.
Re:Linux (Score:5, Informative)
(http://play.pixelblaster.ro/)
Current list of supported formats in addition to HTML include TeX, DVI, PS, full text, mail, man pages, news, troff, WordPerfect, RTF, Microsoft Word/Excel, SGML, C sources and many more. Stubs for PDF support is included in Harvest and will use Xpdf or Acroread to process PDF files. Adding support for new format is easy due to Harvest's modular design.
There are a few others, do your own homework if you want themRe:Linux (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that Google has very much mastered linux ? After all, Linux does power their 15,000+ cluster
Sunny Dubey
Linux Version (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.silentbrouhaha.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 31 2004, @07:42AM)
Besides it would make sense to do both the only real difference is the UI programming at least for OS X, the filesystems on both systems are very similar.
Re:Linux Version (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Linux Version (Score:4, Insightful)
This is of course very different between Windows, Mac and Linux (and within Linux there are, as usual, several different methods)
Re:Linux Version (Score:4, Interesting)
What google knows is that most Linux desktop installs are downloaded gratis, installed gratis and that the owner/user likes/is interested in "gratis". I'd suggest that many of the machines are home-built not bought-built too?
OS X, OTOH costs money, and only really (Pear notwistanding/not useable) runs on hardware that has to be paid for (pre-built) at the same time as the OS.
Think about it;
User interested in free-stuff / cost savings
vs
User who paid the Apple premium.
Where would _you_ rather vector a global ad-network to???
User who
Re:Linux Version (Score:5, Informative)
(http://thias.absyrde.net/wordpress/ | Last Journal: Wednesday May 03 2006, @09:10AM)
Most importantly, this is not about API, this is about data. What this is all about is searching and indexing datafiles and from this point of view the files on a typical Mac OS X machine and a Linux desktop will be quite different.
For instance on Mac OS X, some data files are actually bundles, i.e a directory with a special bit telling the Finder to handle the folder as a single file. Keynotes files are bundles with extension .key that contain an XML manifest an the different files included in the presentation. Older Mac OS filetypes would store some meta-data (icons, keywords) in the resource forks. Those things have, as far as I know, no equivalent in the Linux world.
On the other hand, a Linux version would have to cope with the differences between distributions (what source code should be indexed on gentoo machine?) , the different desktop managers (they might store interesting information), and different file format (it would be nice if it could parse tgif files for instance).
In the end, it is all about data, not about licences, APIs or anything else. The whole point of meta-data and searching, for me, is not about indexing my music collection (I keep it organised), but to be able to search my old files, which include Quickdraw 1 Picts and Word 4.0 (DOS) files.
Re:Linux Version (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 26 2003, @06:32AM)
Maybe they know it didn't?
Excellent... (Score:1, Funny)
mehh, i'm waiting for (Score:4, Funny)
"Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://seankelly.biz/)
Re:"Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
Search is already a fundamental part of the Mac desktop experience...
Individual apps integrate search well, but as an overall system, search on the mac leaves a lot to be desired. Searches using the Finder SUCK: they take forver, and they don't ever seem to help you find what you're looking for.
Tiger (10.4) should improve this quite a bit with Spotlight, Apple's new index/search architecture, which includes a nice plugin system (recently described in more detail here [apple.com]). This theoretically will enable Spotlight to search everything the Google Desktop searches. If Apple can deliver reasonable indexing speeds and quality search results, they're going to be able to compete.
On the other hand, because Apple's already baked in support for Google via Safari, most Mac users are already trained to use Google as their Internet search tool of choice. A Google desktop would extend this behavior seamlessly, so I'll be really curious to see if Apple can retrain users to use Spotlight for local searches. My guess is if Google can deliver soon enough, Spotlight will be a second-try search tool on the Mac.
But wouldn't it be cool to see Apple and Google would combine their efforts?
Hard to believe (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hard to believe (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.soylentred.net/)
nice, but could do better (Score:5, Interesting)
You cannot define which directories to index, and it only indexes single machine. (understandable since it's desktop search, not small network search)
The google search keeps index of the data on the desktop harddrive. If you have lots of files, the index size gets insanely large, some say nearly 2Gb when you have large amount of documents lying around.
It would be relatively easy to build something similar which would work over administrative shares using samba crawlers with defined administrative password for each machine, and you'd have control of which data it would collect. Maybe nfs crawlers too. Plenty of both freely available.
Tricky part is to create the meta indexing of the containing
But the more open developement would allow other indexing, such as ID3 tags.
And perhaps you could add your own meta data to indexed files by filetype, and enhance the search for example only images by containing meta description something like: "meta this image has: cat vase window apple". Search for apple and it returns that picture, crude but works atleast partially.
Problem with this kind of version is that you'd need separate server for the searching, you could reuse some old machine for this.(not problem for most of people here since everyone has extra box somewhere in intranet)
Make the search running with mysql+apache and it would be almost platform independent.
Re:nice, but could do better (Score:4, Informative)
(http://play.pixelblaster.ro/)
You cannot define which directories to index, and it only indexes single machine.
Yes, you can. Look harder.The google search keeps index of the data on the desktop harddrive. If you have lots of files, the index size gets insanely large, some say nearly 2Gb when you have large amount of documents lying around.
That's why you should configure GD to only index your work folders. .... Some other interesting stuff
You can already sort of do this. See Harvest [sourceforge.net]Tough competition... (Score:5, Informative)
The linux/BSD version ... (Score:5, Funny)
Sunny Dubey
Spotlight? (Score:5, Informative)
I have the WWDC Tiger Beta and Spotlight is just flawless. It's totally integrated into the desktop instead of just being browser based, it supports way more file formats, it searches in real time as you type, it lets you save searches as virtual folders and what not...
Not to mention that Mac users are a fanatical bunch that usually upgrade when they have the chance, meaning that a year from now the majority will be using Tiger.
The greater plan (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://vsxgen.sourceforge.net/)
They may just be doing the ground work and getting an installed base for the next version Google Desktop which will connect you to froogle and let you search your desktop as well as your Google Mail in one fell swoop.
I'm just trying to think how they can integrate their Google Desktop with what they already have to make money.
Didn't they just buy a map company?
So you could have this one box where you do a search and if Google Desktop recognizes it as an address it'll bring up a map instead of searching your local computer. Much like it gives you the answer 4 when you type in 2 + 2 instead of searching the web.
So Google is in a position where they can give you one single search box which will let you search for anything you want and it will intelligently look in the right place.
Why not cross-platform ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, if Qt is an issue, why not Java ?
And we are talking Google, the Champions of the internet, and a serious competitor for MS on some areas ... cross platform should be the way to go for them !
quicksilver (Score:1, Informative)
How about earlier Windows? (Score:2)
(http://www.rumorsdaily.com/)
Google, I wanted to try this out. I'll even make you a deal, I'll stop using the Google Drive thing if you put out the Desktop for Windows 98 machines.
Thank you.
Is it just me... (Score:1, Funny)
Network Shares (Score:2)
(http://www.the-forgotten.org/)
Which, in the case of google's multiple user problems it probably a blessing
Google Desktop vs Spotlight: you're not getting it (Score:5, Informative)
Spotlight is not an app, it is a collection of technologies which make it possible for 3rd party apps to support searching.
At the same time, the 1st party (Apple) will be demonstrating how it's done by building search into all the system's own apps, eg, searching for the control panel which changes the desktop pattern within the control panels area. Yes, I know I'm calling them control panels when they're actually system preferences because most posters sound like they haven't used Mac OS X.)
This doesn't mean 3rd parties shouldn't attempt to compete at searching, quite the reverse: Spotlight is FOR 3rd party developers who want to do searching..
So not only would Google Desktop not be in competition with Spotlight, it could actually use its hooks into the OS to create something very powerful indeed.
Dang! (Score:2)
(http://landsberger.com/)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
-Don.
"More useful every day" (Score:3, Informative)
Spotlight vs. Google Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.phor.net/)
Spotlight for Mac owns Google Desktop for Windows.
Google desktop is great on Windows, which has nothing. But on Mac... it can't compete with the type-ahead find. The only way it will come close is if they change their strategy and create a desktop app rather than a web app.
Mac already has Quicksilver (Score:1, Redundant)
(http://www.e.co.za/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 24 2005, @01:26AM)
Check out Quicksilver [blacktree.com].
Google Desktop vs. Spotlight (Score:2, Informative)
The end goal of google desktop is attach advertisements to information gathered from data all over your machine. I haven't downloaded it, so I'm not entirely sure of its capabilities or whether is does that or not (I only have a mac here). However, considering that something like this is more like spyware with vastly intelligent (patented) algorithsm, oppose to Gators strstr() algorithm.
Spotlights end goal is to help you find your files without using that crap Finder. Apple doesn't want you to use Safari to receive ads collected by Spotlight and then buy stuff, its another improvement to the steering wheel for your computer. Google wants to generate ad revenue and your data is part of their business model.
I personally don't like any company using my computer as an advertising platform, it just erks me. I don't want to be part of business model that doesn't profit me and doesn't guarantee my privacy and protection, which Google and no other company can.
Update and clarification (Score:2)
(http://arstechnica.com/)
Cory Doctrow says this is being mis-reported (Score:2)
(http://www.evankai.com/)
Re:Mac version (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday October 30 2004, @12:44AM)
Re:Mac version (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe he uses a Mac?
Everything Google has done so far has been pure gold, so it's hard not to believe they've their acquired their taste from having at least a passing familiarity with the best designed OS GUI around.
Re:Maybe OT but (Score:1)