Google moves beyond beta with desktop search

[DevilDog#1]

By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: March 7, 2005, 6:33 AM PT

Google has introduced a full version of its desktop-search software, with a developer's kit and support for the Firefox and Netscape browsers.

The Mountain View, Calif., company on Monday released a PC application for searching Microsoft Office documents, images, e-mail and Internet Explorer Web pages. Google Desktop, which had been in public beta for nearly five months, now includes search capabilities for video and music files, full PDFs and Web surfing history in three Web browsers, including the fast-growing Firefox.

It also includes a software developers kit, or SDK, so that outsiders can build new search plug-ins. Already, Google has built a plug-in to search conversations in the Trillian chat software.

"Google desktop search stores a copy of everything you see," said Nikhil Bhatla, a Google product manager. "That can be extremely useful if, for example, an application crashes. With (the tool), you can get the text of that last document you were working on."

For that reason, security plays a bigger part in the full version. Because the tool had been able to index privacy-sensitive documents--against users' wishes--the final product avoids indexing those Word and Excel files that are password-protected, Bhatla said. It also allows people to block indexing of secure Web sites. Google previously had to update the software because of the potential for malicious hackers to capture some personal data.

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