Gizmodo
So word in the Valley is that Google and Apple are still going out, going dutch at Mel's Drive-In and doing naughty things at Apple dad's garage. Now Google wants to get the relationship one step further without putting pressure on Apple and has released Google Desktop for Mac OS X.
It indexes applications, Mail messages, PDFs and all kinds of files supported by Spotlight's plug-ins, as well as the history of all your web browsers and Gmail. It will even keep track of deleted files. After trying it, it feels slower than Spotlight in my PowerBook (maybe in a MacBook it will be different, since it's a Universal application), but it's quite nice and solid for a beta. More first impressions after the jump.
The setup process is painless. The install application even includes a panel to "explore" and install Google apps for Mac OS X, which at this point includes Google Desktop, Google Earth, Gmail notifier and the Picassa Uploader.
After it's installed, you can double tap the Command/Apple key and the widget—which is not Dashboard, but an independent application—will appear on top of the windows. Like Spotlight, Google Desktop will start searching the moment you write in the first letters of your query. The response is good, but Spotlight seems to come up with the results faster, no doubt a result of being integrated at the file system level.
The widget will present you with the top 10 results, a number that can be changed up to 15 results from the preferences, which are integrated with Apple's System Preferences. From here you can also authenticate with Gmail, so it presents both your local and Internet mail results in the same window.
If you want, you can also access Google Desktop from Safari or any other browser by either accessing it from the menu bar icon (which can be activated from the preferences) or by clicking on one of the bottom options of the widget results list. Doing this will give you extended results just like Google does on the Web. The search will even display results from deleted documents, something which Spotlight will probably include in Leopard thanks to Time Machine.
Bottom line: solid enough for now, so if you have a Mac, go and play with it.
Download page [Google - thanks Oscar!]
Comments
The real question is when will Picassa for OS X come?
what possible good could come from letting google - a company that makes its money on advertising - learn info about every file and email on my computer?
no thanks, i'll stick with spotlight.
The real question is when iPhoto will have all the Picasa features...
For indexing and plenty more, people with Macs should try Quicksilver. That's one amazing piece of indexing and quick launching software, and it's so flexible it could compete with a Rumanian gymnast.
I just ditched Launchbar for it, which says something. And I still can't understand why I would want to install Google Desktop when I have Spotlight and Quicksilver?
I got to agree with digidandy. Quicksilver is amazing and it sounds like google desktop does only a fraction of what quicksilver can do. I would like to read a comparison of the two, but for now there's nothing tempting me to try this out...
So it does what Spotlight does but takes up additional resources? And I should download this WHY?
and nice.. this is first time for me to see a Cool App which is famous is NOT AVAILABLE for APPLE but works NICELY and longtime available ON LINUX
shamelessly pimping by youtube demo of it working.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGj-M8AjfKk .
Now i hope such nice things continue at other apps too ..... i can just wish... :(
grr, forgot to take name of it , while i was speaking.
I am ofcourse talking of PICASSA :D
google is spreading their scatware to the mac... what is next... linux?
Quicksilver is pretty excellent, and it's the first thing I install when I sit down at a new Mac. Otherwise I sit there slapping ctrl-space and wondering why nothing is happening.
But it's not really the same as Spotlight - it's not really a search program.
Back to Google for a sec: it runs slower than spotlight? Screw it, then. Spotlight is slow enough as it is.
embee:
So it does what Spotlight does but takes up additional resources? And I should download this WHY?
I was hoping Jesus would address that in the review. Oh, well.
I guess you might want it if there were a Google widget you really wanted that wasn't available and couldn't easily be ported to Dashboard. Or if you wanted to have indexed search of your GMail mailbox without hooking Mail up to it via POP.
Seems like a couple of real unlikely scenarios, though.
So the Google blog post about this (here) says:
Haven't you ever accidentally closed or deleted a file you've been working on? Or typed "rm -rf" when you didn't mean to? Now you can just search for the file with Google Desktop and recover all the text content you've lost.
So, Google Desktop saves copies of my files even after I've deleted them? That doesn't sound at all desirable to me. If I wanted to be unable to delete files, I'd just rm the rm utility.
I wonder if Google Desktop can be set not to index my porn, the way Spotlight can be. Sounds like Google don't quite get the whole privacy thing, if you can't ever delete file copies using Desktop.
I always liked Google Desktop on the PC and it's the one thing I missed on my Mac.
In my experience, Spotlight has proven to be ridiculously painful to use. Generally, I find it very slow and returns too many results without enough options to narrow it down without knowing exactly what I'm looking for.
I do use QuickSilver but QS goes by file name and won't tell me the contents of a file. It also won't find exactly what page I was viewing when I saw a really interesting gadget I can't quite remember the name of. I used to really rely on Google Desktop being a permanent memory of everything I've seen on the web. I didn't need bookmarks with GD.
As for privacy options, you can choose to have Google Desktop not save any sites, not save sites that are https, or not save any particular locations. Also, you can remove anything (file, web page, etc.) from your local search results.
I for one am excited to see how it runs on my MBP. The integration of local search, history, Gmail, and the web index in one place is great.
Yes, Google Desktop uses the same rules as Spotlight to avoid searching whatever you don't want it to index.
As for the comments about Spotlight, It's good to have options.
i want Picassa!
Don't try hiding your porn Manuel- Alberto Gonzalez already has a complete rundown of your porn browsing habits...
Actually, GD excludes the same folders that you set Spotlight to exclude (let's just say 'Documents/Archive/Marketing Plan 2003 Western Region'). And I believe you can set GD to NOT cache deleted documents.
I think "feels slower" should be taken out of the headline because it's misleading. This wasn't tested on the processor it was designed for, and of course it's going to be slower using Rosetta.
@bdkennedy1,
You are wrong. Looks like you haven't read the article and you don't have a clear idea of was Rosetta is:
- Google Desktop is a Universal Application, meaning it's designed and compiled to run optimized on both PowerPC (like the one I used for my informal test) and Intel processors.
- Rosetta is an emulation engine that will run PowerPC-compiled applications on Intel-based hardware under Mac OS X. Roughly, it translates PowerPC code into Intel code on the fly. Nothing to do with the article or Google Desktop.
Googgle desktop is about eleventy times faster than the laaaaame Spotlight, on my 2.16gHz MacBook Pro.
Indexed 150,000 files, and finds intelligent results in less than half a second.
Spotlight out, Google Desktop in.
Eleventy!
Eleventy or "unleaven tea" is kosher for passover.
When I want to launch things, I have Quicksilver. When I want to search, I have Spotlight.
What does this Google thing do that I can't already do better?
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