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Google tool ready for action
08/03/2005 14:08 - (SA)
San Francisco - Google Inc's free software that can help people find information stored on computer hard drives, emerged from test mode on Monday with an upgraded product.
The improvements in Google Desktop extend the software's reach beyond material searched by the "beta", version that's been out since October as a free download.
With the expansion, the software now scours hard drives for information contained in Adobe Acrobat's portable document format, or PDF, as well as music and video files. It also will scan content in more e-mail applications. The test version only sifted through e-mail in Microsoft Outlook.
The software still can't handle the formats of hundreds of other applications that run on the Windows operating system. To address that shortcoming, Google is providing the software's application program interface, or API, so outsiders can add more features to the package.
For instance, Google expects a plug-in to search for material stored in Apple Computer Inc's popular iTunes music library to be available soon.
'Stamp of credibility'
Many of Google's improvements match features already offered in the test versions of competing products from three of the company's biggest search engine rivals - Yahoo Inc, Microsoft Corp and Ask Jeeves Inc.
Mountain View-based Google is the first of that bunch to take its desktop search product out of the test tube, giving it an important stamp of credibility, said industry analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research.
Most businesses and many consumers refuse to install software on their computers while the bugs are still being worked out so Google's latest move could give it a slight advantage over rivals, Li said.
Google usually tests its products for far longer than it did with the desktop search package. Both the company's news and shopping comparison services have been in beta since 2002 and its free e-mail service continues to test more than 10 months after its introduction.
Google and its rivals all are hoping to score points with consumers and businesses by helping them to organise the digital information that's increasingly glutting hard drives.
The crusade requires hard drives to be indexed so they can be searched in a matter of seconds, a convenience that has raised privacy concerns among some critics who fear the software will make it easier for prying eyes to spy on unwitting computer users.
Google thinks the best way to thwart trespassers is for users to create a password for entering the Windows operating system, said Nikhil Bhatla, a company product manager.
On the net:
desktop.google.com
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