October 14, 2004

Google Desktop: Another great tool from Google

Google has introduced yet another interesting tool- a desktop search tool. There is a good review on it at O'Reilly Network.

I just installed it, and have yet to play around with it. Some things I'm curious about, and some disturbing (?) questions it raises:

  • The first thing I'd like to check out is what it indexes from my filesystem, and where does it keep these indices.
  • Is there any way to clean Google's search index? What if I download sensitive information on PC indexed by GoogleSearch, then delete the file/clear the browser cache- does the Google seach index entry go away too?
  • The tool can index IM messages and secure messages (https pages). Does this mean it can be used like a snooping mechanism for other users on the PC?
  • No way (that I can see) to be able to specify which directories to not index. I used Google's Picasa a lot, and you can do so in that
  • You can configure the tool to not send search requests to Google.com when you search on your PC, so I am not too worried about that. Not being unable to purge search indices is what I'm worried about..
  • The tool is accessed via a browser interface; what would be interesting is if you can access it remotely. I would like to make it do a search across PCs in a LAN. I have a bunch of PCs in my home network (not all Windows, so that limits me now, as this is Windows only), and being able to do a search across them would be very useful to me... though that would bring up a host of other security concerns- imagine such a setup in a corporate LAN

Google, I'm sure, has a lot more ambitious plans for this. The name (GoogleDesktop, and not something like DesktopSearch), implies that they have bigger ambitions than just being a better way to do search on the desktop.

PS: Slashdot has a discussion on it too today

[Update 12:23 PM]: After Google Desktop had indexed some emails, I went ahead and removed them (permanently) from Outlook. On doing a search again (after a few minutes), I found them in the search cache- complete emails and all. Disturbing. When does this cache expire?

[Update 1:41 PM]: Guess I didn't RTF-FAQ... From the Desktop Privacy FAQ:
Q. How do I prevent items from appearing in Google Desktop Search results?
A. If you want to prevent something from being found by Google Desktop Search, you can do any or all of the following:

  • Remove specific items from Google Desktop Search results by clicking on the "Remove" link on a results page.
  • Prevent specific web pages, files and directories from ever being indexed or copied into Google Desktop Search by selecting specific items for Desktop Search to ignore in Preferences.
  • Pause Google Desktop Search to stop it from indexing and copying what you view during the pause period by clicking the "Pause Indexing" item in the task tray menu.
  • Prevent whole categories of items from being indexed and copied into Google Desktop Search, including email, chats, different file types, as well as web pages in general or secure (https) web pages in particular. This can be set in Preferences.
Note that deleting an email from your email client does NOT delete its copy from Google Desktop Search. Nor does deleting a document or spreadsheet remove the stored copy of that document or spreadsheet that Google Desktop Search has created. This enables you to retrieve copies of things that you may have accidentally changed or deleted. If you want to delete the Google Desktop Search copy as well, you have to do so from within Google Desktop Search.


Oops. My bad.

[Update Oct 15, 3:04 PM]: A discussion on slashdot today talks about the issue I raised yesterday, namely being able to snoop on other users on the PC. Not an issue (or shouldnt be) if its a home PC, but could be a problem for any other situations. You can offcourse, configure it to behave in a sane way, like not index pages from specific websites, or folders, or not index any web pages at all. Besides, it only indexes content that is accesible normally, though it does make finding such stuff much easier. I had fun today with running it with random search strings, and seeing what it brought up.

Kind of like finding things under your couch cushion that you had forgotton about. Some loose change..and some icky stuff :-)

Posted by vivek at October 14, 2004 10:30 AM | TrackBack