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Subject: Re: OT: new google desktop search - so far, so good

Author: William Penn

Date: 05:35:41 10/15/04

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On October 14, 2004 at 22:19:59, William Penn wrote:

>On October 14, 2004 at 19:44:55, Mike Byrne wrote:
>
>>On October 14, 2004 at 18:00:15, Will Singleton wrote:
>>
>>>http://desktop.google.com/
>>>
>>>(windows only)
>>
>>
>>is it useful ?
>
>I've installed it too, and we'll know soon... :)
>WP
>(probably yes)

So far, so good. It is constantly (after about a minute's delay, to determine
that I'm inactive) indexing my emails (including the text therein!), files on my
computer (including the text inside .txt and other text files!), and internet
pages visited. I don't chat, or it would be indexing that also.

It puts an icon in systray to make it easy to bring up the search page, then
it's exactly like searching at google.com for anything - except it searches my
local computer instead. It's definitely useful if there's something you're
having a hard time finding on your computer. If you're like me, and even though
my memory is fairly good, there's so much data on my computer that only searches
stand a chance to find it all. It just requires you to remember or guess the
best keyword(s) to locate it. Sometimes it takes a few tries to come up with the
proper keyword(s), but it works, in general.

My only question at this point regards security and privacy. It wants to access
the internet whenever it puts something new into the cache on my local computer,
and I don't understand why that should be necessary!? So I've blocked its
internet access with my firewall (ZoneAlarm), and so far it seems to be
continuing to do its indexing/cacheing chores like usual. I'm certainly not an
expert in this area, but am cautious about allowing anything on my computer to
access the internet. Only my browser, email and ftp clients, and antivirus
software get the green lights. Even my firewall must ask for permission! So the
Google Desktop ain't gonna get that kind of blanket permission from me
(probably).

I'm finding a fair amount of anti-google sentiment. A lot of people don't trust
google.
WP



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