Google Desktop

(Rambling ahead…) Google Desktop beta. Early impressions anyone? I think it’s pretty damn cool…a baby step towards the GooOS. Do a regular Google search and GD results are inlined right at the top (see screenshots for how it all works). How are they doing that technically?

I’ve cranked up the size of my browser cache…now that GD can index every page I’ve ever viewed in my browser, can I afford to throw any of it away? This one-ups what A9 is doing in caching visited sites and searching past search results.

Could this be Google’s portal play? If they’ve got info on all the files on my computer, why not display my latest calendar items, emails, online buddies, etc. right on Google’s home page?

But then there’s the privacy issues. Is Google using information from my local drive to improve my search results? Should they? “Mr. Kottke, I see you’ve mentioned ‘President Bush’ in a recent email. Here are some Google News stories on that topic.” Useful, but well, you know.

A co-worker wants to put Google Desktop on a Web server and use that as a search engine for a Web site. Not sure if that would work, but it’s an interesting idea. I’m sure some smart hacker will soon figure out how to expose his/her GD search results to the outside world.