Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

Editor's Note: Google Desktop Search was retired in September 2011.

If Google doesn't make a bid for world domination soon, I'll be surprised. With the Google Maps (with satellite databases no less!), the #1 web search, phone directories (through Google Local), Groups, News, Shopping, and now Google Desktop and Google Talk, it's hard to find something related to technology that Google doesn't already have an interest in. I'm waiting for the Google Edition Monopoly and Trading Cards...

I've been playing with the Google Desktop Search Beta and am pleasantly surprised. Even in Beta, it works beautifully, and is nicely unobtrusive, allowing a user to quickly search from the toolbar, from a side "dock," or from a tiny blip of a "deskbar," making the program as clean or as cluttered as you wish. I prefer a clear desktop, the better to see my extensive collection of desktop pictures, and so Desktop is residing in the toolbar for the moment, the only sign of its presence a small text space. From this text space, I can search not only my hard drive but all of Google's various searches as well, and since I use Google as my primary portal to the web to begin with, this step towards convergence and integration is well-deserved and long-awaited. I just wish I had gotten in on the IPO... [Britt Godwin]