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Google to Launch Mac Version of Google Desktop UPDATED 173

Posted by michael 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 More

Google to Launch Mac Version of Google Desktop UPDATED

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  • Spotlight? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tciny ( 783938 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:17AM (#10671601)
    Why would google try to compete with Spotlight which will offer a lot more features than googles win-desktop search does?
    • embrace and extend, anyone ?

    • Re:Spotlight? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jdwest ( 760759 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:22AM (#10671620)
      Because not everyone will not upgrade to Tiger immediately, if ever.

    • Re:Spotlight? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:32AM (#10671658)
      Competition on this can only be a good thing - more choice for the consumer, and it will push both Google and Apple to make better products.

      • Re:Spotlight? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        But this is the cult of the Mac you're up against here. Anything apple releases is immediatly paid for and declared the best thing ever.

    • Typical Apple Fanatic's Take... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ..."Competing with Apple==BAD!!!!"

      Don't you guys ever think... "man, more competition...maybe Apple will offer me more next time around to compete with google"

      Or

      "Wow, I really like this new google desktop search engine. I think I'll use it"

      Sometimes I think apple could offer crap on a stick and you fanatics would buy it and defend it just because Apple told you to.

      Oh, and before you ask, I own 5 Macs, including a pair of powerbooks, a G5, and 2 iMacs, but get a little real here.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @09:07AM (#10671981)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Typical Apple Fanatic's Take... (Score:5, Informative)

        by marmoset ( 3738 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @09:34AM (#10672110) Homepage Journal
        In this case, though, what the non-Apple competition is going to be offering (at least in relation to Spotlight) is much less.

        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.
        • Right. But how fast is spotlight? To me, that's the single most impressive thing about the google product. It gives me results from a fullish disk, with several million-plus LOC code bases on it, almost instantaneously. I'll be impressed (and happy) if spotlight is half as speedy.

          A.
          • Well, in just the preview it was rather blistering. It is as fast, but more perty than launch bar and has only a few sticking points (when I tried to do text doc searching, within the docs) which will be fixed before it goes gold.

            so, yah, my 2 120Gb hard drives with 20 Gb available on them now was being searched by spotlight with ease.

      • This it true, but for the most part Apple can possibly offer a better product given the way it ties with the operating system. Google Desktop search may be limited by this fact.
    • Why does it have to compete?

      Dominic Giampaolo used to work at Google (in fact, many of the indexing approaches taken by Spotlight are based on his experiences there.)

      Eric Schmidt is saying that it's a complete rewrite. Re-engineered for a completely different environment.

      Google's smart enough to leverage the good bits of the OS. My money would be on them using Spotlight intelligently and hooking the local index (created by Giampaolo & Co.) with the global index (created by Schmidt & Co.)

  • Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:18AM (#10671606)
    It's great to see this happening, but what I'd really like to see is a Linux version.

    Of course, most of the world doesn't care, so it wouldn't be likely 2 happen.
    • I'm guesing a linux/unix version would come after the max version.
      there's allot of flavors of linux/unix, so it might be handy if they have some experience from doing it good on other systems first.

      • Re:Linux (Score:5, Informative)

        by afd8856 ( 700296 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:31AM (#10671651) Homepage
        You can already do this with Linux. There are several software spiders intended for setting up search functions for websites or just localhost. One of them is harvest [sourceforge.net] and let me quote on the formats suported from their website:

        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 them :)

      • Re:Linux (Score:5, Informative)

        by phoxix ( 161744 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:45AM (#10671699)
        I'm guesing a linux/unix version would come after the max version. there's allot of flavors of linux/unix, so it might be handy if they have some experience from doing it good on other systems first.

        You do realize that Google has very much mastered linux ? After all, Linux does power their 15,000+ cluster ... They wrote GFS (different than Redhat's GFS) for linux too ...

        Sunny Dubey
    • They can't create a Linux version because all the OSS hippies will just blast it for being evil propriety software and run around posting links to some BS app on SourceForge thats supposedly 6.2 million trillion times better than GDS.

      Besides, it's also way too easy to install. Linux users are masochists that way.
      • Besides, it's also way too easy to install. Linux users are masochists that way.
        Hey! Red Hat users maybe, but don't go lumping those of us who use Debian in with them!
        apt-get update
        apt-get install foo
        isn't rocket science.
      • They can't create a Linux version because all the OSS hippies will just blast it for being evil propriety software and run around posting links to some BS app on SourceForge thats supposedly 6.2 million trillion times better than GDS.

        Actually, Google is pretty damn popular. How can you not love a company that offers very good search for free and doesn't screw over customers while still being profitable?

        Besides, it's also way too easy to install. Linux users are masochists that way.

        RPMs and those Debian

    • I think that google realises that the good will of the geeks is very important.

      They know, that for their line of business, the geeks are a really powerful, _highly_ opinionated, bunch of people. Should we start disliking Google we will start telling our relatives to use some other search engine.

      If they court us and we continue to like them, or maybe even like them more, then we will scoff at anyone who uses another search engine.

      So, even if Linux has a small market share that market share is a highly inf

    • Re:Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cortana ( 588495 )
      Beagle [gnome.org].

  • Linux Version (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bruha ( 412869 )
    I guess Google must not know that Linux has now outpaced desktop installs vs Mac's..

    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)

      by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:29AM (#10671639)
      Whilst I wish what you were saying was true all the statistics I have seen place Mac around 2-2.5% and Linux 0.5-1.5%. Could you tell us what stats you are basing it on?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:Linux Version (Score:3, Interesting)

          by pe1chl ( 90186 )
          They claim Mozilla has over 17% market share.
          Maybe for a select group of users. Slashdot statistics could be similar. But for a website for the general public, that figure would be much too large.
      • It just depends which statistics you depend on. A lot of people think that linux overtook apple sometime even in 2003 due to IDC's statistics taking. I believe that it may have slenderly overtook in the past few months, though I'm a linux user so I'm biased. Shipping numbers are quite similar, don't know who's leading at this exact moment, but it was Apple by a very slender margin half a month ago according to linuxinsider, though Gartner says many computers bought with linux included are used for pirate

      • Re:Linux Version (Score:3, Informative)

        by rmayes100 ( 521535 )

        Probably one of the more accurate accounts of installed base for various operating systems was Google itself on the old Google Zeigeist pages. Unfortionately Google didn't like people using their Zeitgeist pages to infer market share so they stopped doing it last July, but June 2004 shows Linux accounting for 1% of Google searches and MacOS 3%. Certainly Google still tracks this information internally and the fact that they are releasing a MacOS version of their desktop tool says a lot about how MacOS is

    • Re:Linux Version (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pe1chl ( 90186 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:29AM (#10671640)
      The issue probably is not the filesystem, but rather the UI programming and the linking of programs to document types.
      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)

      by rdc_uk ( 792215 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:36AM (#10671670)
      " I guess Google must not know that Linux has now outpaced desktop installs vs Mac's.."

      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)

      by Matthias Wiesmann ( 221411 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @08:14AM (#10671766) Homepage Journal
      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.
      Yes and no. Yes, you access both filesystems using the same API (POSIX), but the underlying file-system are quite different. Because of this, if you are going to search / index the filesystem, you will have to do it differently if you want to be efficient (the Mac OS X find utility does not use either the find or locate command-line tools).

      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.

    • The installed base of Linux v. Mac is somewhat contestable because it is difficult to measure either with an acceptable accuracy.

      The last estimates I've heard was 3% or so for both and even that's not all that reliable. Another thing to be concerned about are the nuances between the Linux distributions, which can reduce inter-distribution portabilty for commercial entities, wereas OS X is... pretty much OSX.

      Isn't the usage rate of Firefox greater than this?

      In regards to Google toolbar, I don't know how

    • Re:Linux Version (Score:5, Funny)

      by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @08:23AM (#10671785) Journal
      I guess Google must not know that Linux has now outpaced desktop installs vs Mac's..

      Maybe they know it didn't?
      • Does netcraft confirm this? :D

        *ducks and runs away before the Beowulf Cluster jokes come*
      • This is more insightful than funny.

        Google is numero uno in search, and is most certainly the one ubiquitous website that everyone visits. If anyone would know the distribution of OSes, it would be these guys.

        Maybe you do have a valid, albeit disappointing, point :)

    • Re:Linux Version (Score:3, Insightful)

      by michaeldot ( 751590 )

      I guess Google must not know that Linux has now outpaced desktop installs vs Mac's..

      Apart from the fact that stat was falsified, they are VERY different users.

      Most Linux users are capable of writing Google for themselves, or at least know how to grep search anything they want.

      Mac users are probably the ones who would appreciate Google's finesse the most.

    • The market share of Linux is NOT measurable in any way since it mostly isn't sold but downloaded and who knows how many time each user downloaded their distros for various reasons (I know I downloaded parts of many flavors of Linux, I don't use them at all, I tried them and haven't stick with it). Someone downloading Linux doesn't mean he is going to use it, he might just want to do this, try it, that doesn't mean he will use. So, NO way of measuring the market share of Linux, plus Linux comes in a myriad o

    • Re:Linux Version (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Gumber ( 17306 )
      I'd guess that Google probably has VERY good stats on what OSs Google users are using.

      They also probably realize that among the influencers in chattering classes (bloggers, journalists, etc), Macs enjoy a higher than average marketshare.

  • Excellent... (Score:1, Funny)

    by nblender ( 741424 )
    Soon we'll have all the windows virii ported too... It'll be just like old times...

  • mehh, i'm waiting for (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tracer_Bullet82 ( 766262 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:21AM (#10671618)
    BSD version :)

  • "Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:28AM (#10671635) Homepage
    I'm curious what improvements Google will make to the overall user experience of Mac OS X. Search is already a fundamental part of the Mac desktop experience: virtually every application features a search field in the upper-right hand corner of the window (lower-right-ish for some bizarre reason on iCal). The Google mantra of "search, don't sort" is at least partially alive on this platform today.

    • Re:"Search" is already fundamental to Mac OS X (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bt ( 39804 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @08:21AM (#10671778)

      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?

      • I've found the search on 10.3 to be OK. It's not as quick as Google Desktop on my PC, but then it searches a great deal more types of document. It is annoying that it doesn't seem to work for characters like $ and ?, so searching on PHP files can be a pain if you're after certain variables.

        I'm finding Google Desktop relatively useless because most of my docs are in OO.o format, or old Works documents (.wps), neither of which it indexes. It also doesn't index my PHP or ColdFusion code at all, which means I

    • You mac guys are funny (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      " will make to the overall user experience"

      Most people "use" a computer.

      Mac fanatics have a "user experience".

    • Heh -- it's funny but until you mentioned it I never noticed that search field in iCal! And I use iCal a lot.

      Thanks!

  • Hard to believe (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fionbio ( 799217 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:33AM (#10671661)
    I thought Google doesn't suffer so much from bad design. Tying such app to platform is definitely very bad design choice, especially if there are plans to port it to different platforms. They could save a lot of development time by using platform abstraction instead of direct usage of Win32 API throughout the code. I wonder why Google engineers have chosen such a strange approach. Maybe they were too short of time?

    • Re:Hard to believe (Score:4, Informative)

      by Finuvir ( 596566 ) <rparle@@@soylentred...net> on Saturday October 30, 2004 @08:50AM (#10671907) Homepage
      I would imagine the vast majority of the work involved in developing this is platform-specific, mostly due to the differences in file systems.

    • Re:Hard to believe (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Quobobo ( 709437 )
      This would be a valid point, if it weren't something that simply has to be tied into the OS itself. This is a product that's supposed to integrate into the user's desktop and existing applications, and a big part of that is always fitting in with the OS. I agree with what you're saying, it's a good mantra to go by for most applications, but for things like this you want a "native" feel. Plus, we're talking about Mac users here, arguably the most picky when it comes to UI issues.

      They'll probably try to reus
    • Buh? It's not bad design. You want software that performs well, acts as a database, on your machine, and you expect it not to be tied to the platform in any way? You expect it to be secure in relation to the os, run as well?


      eclipse, oracle, word, mozilla, firefox.. if you expect a major piece of softwae not to require some sorta tie back into what you are doing, you are insane.

    • RTFA. He didn't say that it needed to be rebuilt because of API differences. He said it needs to be rebuilt because of fundemental differences. I read that to mean different things.

      Regardless, they weren't building a platform abstraction toolkit. They were building a desktop search tool. Only a very bad developer would build one when he was trying to build the other.

    • I sort of doubt that Google Desktop is that tied to Windows. It no doubt has some ties - but I think the 'rebuilding from the ground up' thing is possibly a bit of spin.

      Consider that Mac OS is getting Spotlight soon, and GD will have to compete with that. Now, one thing Mac users don't like (and this works the other way too, come to that) is shoddy ports of Windows products that 'just about' run on Mac OS, but don't really use the idioms of the platform. So if Mr Google says "We had to rebuild it from

    • Did you notice the size of the GDS download for windows? It's under half a MB including the installer code. I find it hard to imagine that it wouldn't be at least 2-3x that size if they'd used some sort of abstraction layer. Size is important. The bigger the download, the worse the user experience of downloading.

  • nice, but could do better (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Keruo ( 771880 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:35AM (#10671665)
    The idea of desktop search is good, but I think the google version lacks in few details.
    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 .doc .ppt etc. formats.
    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)

      by afd8856 ( 700296 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:39AM (#10671684) Homepage

      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]
      • That's why you should configure GD to only index your work folders.

        How do you do that? I have only seen the ability to exclude directories, and if I could just limit it to certain directories, that'd be incredibly sweet for the purposes I'd like to use it for.

  • Tough competition... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:36AM (#10671671)
    The competition is going to be tough on the Mac platform with launchbar [obdev.at], quicksilver [blacktree.com] allready there and do not forget apple's upcomming spotlight [apple.com]. Seems like another fine example of a function at which the Mac platform is ahead of its competition: "fast access to content".

  • The linux/BSD version ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by phoxix ( 161744 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @07:49AM (#10671715)
    grep -r . -H -I -i -n -e "foobar"
    Works like a charm! *grin*

    Sunny Dubey

  • Spotlight? (Score:5, Informative)

    by CharAznable ( 702598 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @08:05AM (#10671750)
    The question is: why?
    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.
    • Until Tiger comes along, quicksilver [blacktree.net] is an excellent search/launch app.


      By just using a combination of the "control-tab" command to switch between apps and using the quicksilver shortcuts I never have to use the dock anymore or search for documents using the inferor 10.3 native search option.

    • The greater plan (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 3770 ( 560838 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @09:03AM (#10671966) Homepage
      It could be that the first version of Googles software doesn't do anything that Spotlight doesn't. But they probably have a business plan that is far more far reaching than people think.

      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)

    by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @08:21AM (#10671779)
    Wouldn't it have made more sense to begin Windows development on something like Qt, that can then be recompiled for Mac, Linux, BSD, etc ? Qt's abstraction for the filesystem would probably have been enough for them, and the GUI capabilities are way more than they need. Not to mention i18n and so forth.

    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 !

    • They don't need cross-platform toolkits. They hire cross-platform programmers, who are experienced in coding in native apis like Xlib and Windows API.

      Or, if Qt is an issue, why not Java ?

      Maybe because Java requires the end-user to install a Java Virtual Machine? Remember, we're dealing with the desktop market here. The less things the average user has to install to get things running, the better.

      And don't tell me Java is already intalled everywhere, ok? It isn't.

      • They don't need cross-platform toolkits. They hire cross-platform programmers, who are experienced in coding in native apis like Xlib and Windows API.

        But Dante, this is exactly the point. Your development cost this way is roughly propotional to N when you develop for N platforms. If you use a cross platform toolkit, somebody did the effort of abstracting/mapping the native APIs on a common API for you. You develop once, desploy everywhere. Your cost is N times lower, in this case 3 times lower.

        • The number of users is going to be at least N times lower too. Apps written using cross-platform APIs suck. On the Mac, cross-platform apps look like crappy ports from Windows (which they basically are), and people hate using them. Normally, it's worth the effort to specialize for each platform if you want a significant number of users.
    • Loving to point out the obvious: the whole, yes, point of a search engine is that it's at least faster than going through your stuff yourself.

      I'm not the most knowledgeable person around, but I'd say that excludes anything non-native, no? Maybe not, what do I know.

      BTW, am I the only one who sometimes stands in his office, mumbling "search"? Now, that would be a power-tool...

      BTW2, I don't think most ordinary users would prefer Google over Tiger's blitz und glitz...
    • So you haven't used Google Desktop Search is what you're saying?

      The only part of the program that even has a GUI is the installer. Everything else is done through web browser integration. But I'm sure Qt and Java can integrate with IE, Firefox and Safari, right? Oh, and the application runs as a system tray application on Windows and probably a menulet on MacOS... Qt supports both of those, right? In a single project?

      Before you go around giving advice to Google, maybe you should expend a little effort

  • quicksilver (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    theres already a wonderful desktop search program called quicksilver for mac os x thats much more secure than google
  • I'm using Windows ME and Google Desktop only works on XP and above. Comon, I'm not so far behind the curve, am I? I suppoe that's what you get for buying a new machine right before Windows puts out a new OS.

    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.

    • I'm using Windows ME

      Don't look now, but I think your /, account has been hacked. This can't be a serious post. No self respecting registered slashdotter would use Windows ME -- it was terrible. Hell, I wouldn't even expect that of an Anonymous Coward.

  • Or am I the only person in the world who knows just where I put everything on my computer? You come up with an organized system, and follow it. It's not Rocket Science -- it's more like Computer Science.

    • Re:Is it just me... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cryogenic ( 112735 )
      I know where practically everything is on my computer as well, but I can't (for example) remember the content of every log file I store in the log directory. Remember that the primary goal of Desktop Search is not to find your file by name, but to find your file by content.

    • am I the only person in the world who knows just where I put everything on my computer?

      No, not just you, there's also the people who sort their book library by Dewey decimals, have cataloged everything they've ever recorded onto videotape, and enter all the fields on iTunes tracks.

      On second thoughts, yes, it is just you, you anal-retentive freak! :)

    • You're not the only one, but doesn't it seem like a meticulous, unnecessary process to setup an organized system like that? And when you come across a file you had not anticipated, the structure changes. The point of something like GDS is so you won't have to remember how you structured your files. It's all there at your fingertips. You just have to remember the context of the document.
  • Great ideas, but last time i tried spotlight or the Google Desktop search they didn't handle network shares at all.

    Which, in the case of google's multiple user problems it probably a blessing ... i'm sure spotlight will handle file permissions much better.

  • Google Desktop vs Spotlight: you're not getting it (Score:5, Informative)

    by michaeldot ( 751590 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @09:28AM (#10672067)

    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.

  • Just what I was dreaming of, spyware for my mac :-D

  • Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @10:30AM (#10672462) Homepage
    Everybody is asking why compete with Spotlight... I say power grab. Get it out before Longhorn, get it out before Tiger... cash in on the google brand-name. There's more coming, this is just getting their foot in the door. A few years ago they could've really gone for the whole enchillada with a tactic like this... now... prob too late. Any thoughts?

    -Don.

  • "More useful every day" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sivar ( 316343 ) <charlesnburns[@]gmai l . c om> on Saturday October 30, 2004 @11:03AM (#10672723)
    If only the search tool would support OpenOffice documents, it would be more useful to many people. Surely the zip'd XML dormat is easier to figure out than the intentionally-difficult-to-parse Offiec format. [Hint for google employees]

  • Spotlight vs. Google Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fulldecent ( 598482 ) on Saturday October 30, 2004 @11:11AM (#10672769) Homepage
    The situation is simple:

    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.

  • 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 Safa

  • Tim O'Reilly posted a clarification to this story in the Ars discussion thread attached to the post. He's the one who asked the original question about the Mac port, and the answer he heard was much more equivocal and less certain than what Reuters is reporting. Be sure and check the post again to get the update.
  • Cory quotes [boingboing.net] Tim O'Reilly, "He was fairly equivocal, saying that it was a hard problem, requiring a whole separate project, not just a port, because of the differences in the operating systems. He made no announcement of actual plans to deliver the product, or even that Google was actively working on it"

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