Google Desktop 1.6.0.1552

Google Desktop is a search engine for your local files.

It is well known that the Web search engine that has been developed by Google is a standard in Web searching. This application brings the power of the Google engine right onto your Macintosh computer.

After it is installed, it starts to index your files on the hard drive. The indexing process can take a long time depending on the number of files that you have on your hard drive and the file types. This process might be annoying because it slows the system in a pretty visible way.

The integration of Google Desktop with Mac OS X is good. It installs a preference pane into the System Preferences panel, it installs a HTTP server that can be accessed only locally and gives you the possibility to use the Google Search on your hard drive in a way that looks like the online Google search, and it also installs an application that can be used like the built in Spotlight.

The 'Preferences' panel doesn't give you the possibility to customize the indexing impact upon your system, but it provides various options that can customize which items would be indexed. It also supports Spotlight's Privacy list, so your private files won't be indexed by this engine either.

Google Desktop has another integration support. When you search online with Google, you can display into your browsers results that are from the local index. These local results are private and accessible only by your computer.

Pluses: it gives you an alternative to the Mac's in-built Spotlight, it integrates well with Mac OS.

Drawbacks / flaws: the indexing service slows down the system, and sometimes it does this when you least expect it.

In conclusion: the package is quite good, the integration philosophy is also quite good, but the developers should work a little bit more on the performance side. Even though it returns results faster than Spotlight, the overall system performance is penalized by the Google Desktop engine.

version reviewed: 1.0.0.155