New Google tool searches desktop

By Chris Gaither | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

2:00 PM EDT, October 14, 2004

Shares of Google began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange, initially moving at $100 a share, $15 more than the offering price set in an unorthodox auction. The sign outside the Nasdaq Marketsite shows a picture of Google staff attending the opening on Aug. 19. (AP/Kathy Willens)

SAN FRANCISCO - Some of the real estate coveted most by the Internet giants isn't on the Internet at all. It's on your computer hard drive.

Google Inc. unveiled a software tool today that lets searchers tap into the files on their PC desktops when they hunt for information on the Web. For instance, Google queries for "Lakers" will return not only Web pages but also every e-mail, instant message or Word document that mentions the basketball team.

The move is expected to unleash a flurry of similar products from such rivals as Yahoo Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc., which have been deploying engineers and buying companies with the goal of tackling desktop search.

But Google's biggest adversary may well be the king of the PC desktop -- Microsoft Corp.

"There's billions at stake now," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. "The battlefields are expanding."

Google and Microsoft are moving more aggressively onto each other's turf.

The Redmond, Wash., software titan is already building its own search engine in an effort to head off up-and-comers. Longhorn, the version of Windows due out in 2006 or 2007, is expected to let users search the Web or the contents of their computers without having to even open a browser.

So Google is trying to establish a beachhead on the PC desktop first.

"It's the Microsoft fear factor," Sullivan said. "There's this fear that Microsoft will come up with a great, integrated tool and wipe out the search engines."

Google executives say there's a more straightforward explanation for why they spent the last year creating Google Desktop: It fits their mission of helping to organize the world's information.

Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products for the Mountain View, Calif., company, said the software should "behave like a photographic memory on your computer: If you've seen it on your machine, you should be able to search for it and find it."

The idea appeals to Gary Price, a librarian and editor of ResourceShelf.com, a website for information professionals who tested the new Google service.

"Some of the most important information is your own, what's on your desktop," he said.

Mayer said Google has no immediate plans to plaster ads on people's PC desktops or on the desktop query results, but she didn't rule that out for the future.

Finding a better way to search computer hard drives isn't a new idea. As even Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has noted, it's ridiculous that people can search billions of Web pages much faster than they can pinpoint items on their own computers.

AltaVista, the search engine company that is now part of Yahoo, tried to solve the problem in 1998, but its solution never caught on. Terra Lycos of Spain, X1 Technologies Inc. of Pasadena and Copernic Technologies Inc. of Newton, Mass., all offer desktop search software.

And others will be following. Ask Jeeves acquired Tukaroo Inc., a privately held desktop search company, in June. Microsoft's MSN division snapped up Lookout Software, another start-up, the following month. Yahoo has said it plans to have its search engine find locally stored information. And Time Warner Inc.'s America Online is reportedly testing desktop search software.

But Google has an advantage. Nearly 70 million people in the United States already visit Google.com each month to search the Web. Why not use Google to simultaneously search your PC?

That may be only the beginning for Google Desktop. Now that Google is indexing the contents of individual PCs, analysts say it's only a matter of time before the company offers to store copies of those files on its vast farm of computer servers. People would be able to access their term papers and PowerPoint presentations from any Internet-connected computer -- whether it runs Windows or not.

Google would not comment on that possibility.