Google Plans Desktop Search Tool for Mac

by , 9:00 PM EDT, October 29th, 2004

After telling The Mac Observer 11 days ago it would seriously consider developing its desktop search tool for the Mac in the future, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Friday his company would definitely release a version of Google Desktop for Macs, but gave no specific timeline.

Mr. Schmidt made the comments at a University of California-Los Angeles conference commemorating the 35th anniversary of the Internet. He said Google Desktop would have to built from scratch for the Mac and that because of that, he could not give a time frame.

"We haven't ruled out a Mac version for the future," Google public relations spokesman Nathan Tyler told TMO on Oct. 18. "Our plan is to perfect the product in its current state, then consider options for other platforms like the Mac at that time."

The free program was released in a preview version earlier this month for Windows-based personal computers only. The 400 kilobyte applet scans and indexes the computer's hard drive for a variety of common file formats, such as Microsoft Office documents, and America Online Instant Messenger chat files as well as plain text and HTML files on your hard drive. Every word in these files is indexed so that a user can search his or her own files in much the same way he or she would search for Web pages on Google. Google Desktop Search uses the browser user interface, and adds a tab to the Google home page.

Much of the functionality of Google Desktop has already been promised by Apple in the next version of Mac OS X, code named 'Tiger'. The new search technology, called Spotlight, will enable users to search for any information, file or document or information on their Mac. Modeled after the search capabilities of Apple's iTunes music application, Spotlight will find e-mails, presentations, images, appointments, Microsoft Office documents and more, arranging its search results by kind, time or people.

Spotlight will also let users create customized folders, playlists, mailboxes and groups that work in the Finder and with individual applications to automatically keep content organized and updated.