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Google Desktop for Mac

Will Google have access to my search info on my Mac?

Am I right to think that somehow Google will be able to data-mine my computer's search indexes? Am I being a bit paranoid?
 
Google just got better

Now when I go to google.com there is a "desktop" option. Maybe I'm missing something, but Google Desktop is real nice in my opinion. Fast too. It's a very welcome addition to Spotlight.
 
now i am curious as to what makes things speed up and slow down in spotlight. i have an intel duo mini and every search i can think of i have tried and i get less than a second to search both the external and internal. i only have 512 ram and that makes me want to cry cause i really need more for many other things. so what is making it different for others? :confused:
 
shen said:
now i am curious as to what makes things speed up and slow down in spotlight. i have an intel duo mini and every search i can think of i have tried and i get less than a second to search both the external and internal. i only have 512 ram and that makes me want to cry cause i really need more for many other things. so what is making it different for others? :confused:
Click to expand...

with your experience, I begin to wonder too, it looks like spotlight behave in a strange way....
 
Just downloaded it to show my support to google mac related items... pretty cool but nothing new (see Spotlight and Quiksilver comments)... I like the presentation and it is very very quick so far... still indexing though and probably will be doing so for awhile... I'll play around with it for another couple of days to see if it sticks but more than likely this will eventually go the way of the widget.
 
ethernet76 said:
Please. As opposed to Dashboard, or all the other things Apple integrates into their system? It's extra crap anyway you look at it. You're just favoring Apple over Google.

I used Google desktop on my 675 P3. It was still faster than spotlight. In fact spotlight is pretty slow for what it does.
Click to expand...

Ok the difference is, Dashboard is a VERY useful addition that has changed the way applications are implemented, as you can see how many people have ripped off that idea now. Anybody that dares to call Dashboard crap really needs to learn human computer interaction. And second, I don't know what you people are doing with your Spotlight, but I just checked mine to make sure I'm not exaggerating, and my Spotlight LITERALLY gives me results in LESS that one second. How can you be faster than that?
 
I have to say that ...

after downloading Google's Desktop, working with it for several minutes, what it does is show me files I have on the internet, and Spotlight doesn't show this. Keywords in duplicate, backup files on other servers (in Curpertino) are included with my computer file results.

My life on the computer is simple, and G's Desktop is redundant. Spotlight is sufficient. I uninstalled Quicksilver for the redundancy of it all too. NASA may actually need quadruple backup computer systems on their spaceships, but I don't.

Alas, ... :cool:

... someday, Mergatroid will live ...!
 
FAST, you say?

While Google Desktop MAY be faster at searching (and, I emphasize MAY), it is slow as all get-out when it comes to indexing my hard drive. I installed Google Desktop yesterday, and after several hours, it had indexed a whopping 15,000+ files. Over 18 hours later, and it's now up to 17,000+ files. In addition to this incredibly slow indexing, it slowed my entire system down to a crawl. Yninstalling fixed the problem. Spotlight works fine. I think I'll stay with it.

2 GHz iMac Intel Core Duo w/2 GB RAM
 
I have always been a huge fan of Google... but I have always hated Google Desktop. I continue to refuse to put it on my Windows PC's and will never even think about putting it on my Mac. Picasa, on the other hand, needs a Mac release... it's better than iPhoto.
 
I don't get it

Okay ... someone help me out. I can run two or three different searches in Google Desktop before Spotlight even does one. What am i doing wrong?
 
MR doesnt support

Analog Kid said:
Export restrictions to Iran are pretty tight, but I'm kind of surprised that they would allow OS X but prevent GDS (not that these things ever make a whole lot of sense). Is it possible the Iranian government has forbidden Google from indexing every hard drive in their country? That would seem a perfectly logical step to me...

Either way, I was kinda psyched to see that MR has representation from Iran now! Welcome! Does MR have a map anywhere showing what countries are represented here?
Click to expand...

google has prevented google desktop from iran not iranian goverment. we sent a letter to google. hope it works.
and while there are more than a million mac users in iran, our country is out of MR`s map!
 
localoid said:
George Orwell just called. He wants his paranoia back. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I wouldn't really laugh about that. Data mining is a serious concern these days and the concept of letting a Big Brother seeing every file you have and everything you do is not something I think anyone should treat lightly. While one may be perfectly innocent and have nothing to hide, there is still a huge potential for harm. I personally have had dialogue with a regional VP of systems for Kroger and have seen the type of information and profiling they can do with just what you purchase on your Kroger card. It really is amazing.

Spiderman may have cheapened this phrase, but with great power comes great responsibility. I will not give my personal, financial, and business documents to a corporation thats only accountability is to its stockholders. I do not think that is unreasonable.
 
the mystery of spotlight

Master Atrus said:
Okay ... someone help me out. I can run two or three different searches in Google Desktop before Spotlight even does one. What am i doing wrong?
Click to expand...

i am really starting to wonder myself. i have 3 macs in the house, and the intel mini and the eMac are lightning fast on spotlight, but i just tried my wife's G4 iBook and spotlight is dog slow on it. i have a lot more files on the other 2 and the eMac and iBook have the same RAM while the mini has the least, so i am not seeing a pattern here yet.

anyone else have any ideas? :confused:

i will try to reindex her iBook later maybe and see if it responds.
 
tuartboy said:
I wouldn't really laugh about that. Data mining is a serious concern these days and the concept of letting a Big Brother seeing every file you have and everything you do is not something I think anyone should treat lightly. While one may be perfectly innocent and have nothing to hide, there is still a huge potential for harm. I personally have had dialogue with a regional VP of systems for Kroger and have seen the type of information and profiling they can do with just what you purchase on your Kroger card. It really is amazing.

Spiderman may have cheapened this phrase, but with great power comes great responsibility. I will not give my personal, financial, and business documents to a corporation thats only accountability is to its stockholders. I do not think that is unreasonable.
Click to expand...

Trust me. You want privacy? Cut your cord to the 'Net because your IP# activity could be tracked by a zillion people daily. And unless you're wiping your hard drive every day any court can read through its contents via a court order. Just keep in mind that Leonardo da Vinci wrote his private notes backwards for good reason. :p

But, worrying about Google Desktop is much ado about nothing. ;)
 
rezatayebi said:
google has prevented google desktop from iran not iranian goverment. we sent a letter to google. hope it works.
and while there are more than a million mac users in iran, our country is out of MR`s map!
Click to expand...

Wow, that is quite a lot! Assuming a 5% market share (which is on the high side) that equates to 20 million computer users, out of 70 million in the population.
 
Spotlight is presently very limited in terms of search flexibility and ranking results.
Google offers queries with multiple words, sentence match using double quotes etc. But most importantly, Google sorts by relevance and shows the context in which the query occurs in the retrieved documents. This really helps a lot, sometimes with spotlight you search a keyword and get back 100s of hits in pdf files but you don't really know where is the one you want.
Also, Google seems much more responsive.
I do hope Leopard version of Spotlight will adopt the above features.

Only problem, with Google desktop, indexing in my system seems to restart every time I reboot (why?)
 
hircus said:
Thanks for that! I'm a bit concerned that it's using InputManagers... uh, with Leopard coming out Real Soon Now, won't they have to do a rewrite since InputManagers will be banned?
Click to expand...

It's probably safe to assume that Google already has a working Leopard ver. of their Desktop that they're testing. The pre-release ver. of Leopard has been available to developers for some time, and quite likely Google could get their question answered by Apple.

Google + Apple... working on "secret stuff"... together... remember? ;)
 
syklee26 said:
do people actually use spotlight? maybe it's just me but i never have to search for files. you need to organize your works, mon.
Click to expand...

i use it all the time. i haven't bothered organising my files since tiger was implemented. it's easy. all documents are saved and go into the documents folder :p . no folders!!

when you have to open a file, you first remember the topic right? then you have to go to your documents folder, go to the sub folder and then search thru that folder yeh? with spotlight you just remember the topic or some of its contents - even a few words in it and it does the rest. my documents folder has over 3000 unfiled, disorganised documents in there. i always find it in a flash - faster than doing all of the steps that you would do.


aussie_geek
 
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