Google desktop search emerges from beta status

• Google Desktop Search is now out of beta testing phase and ready for full scale promotions as a whole product offering which now includes some extra features.
• Amazingly enough, Google Desktop Search is set up like the Google homepage, except it searches an index which is kept on your machine and not web based.
• Google Desktop Search offerings include a chat search where Google allows you to search your past AOL Instant Message (AIM) conversations through some kind of partnership with AOL (a current Google partner) but has not been able to index Yahoo and other Instant Messaging history.
• Sushubh Mittal of the Search Engine Journal and TechWhack adds "What I liked about Google Desktop Search is the ability to be able to search my hard disk using the very popular Google Search interface.
• "The application comes as a 450 KB download file and installs locally on the system.
• The background-running crawlers monitor the files and internet/chat sessions and keep the index up-to-date by indexing the system when the system is not busy.
• The processes were eating up quiet some system memory on my personal test system at around 15 megs, but then with the current processing powers and system memory...
• It merges with the Google interface itself and let you search your system as you search the internet from Google.
• If the search query finds a relevant document on the local system, it is shown at the top just like results from Google news.
• Unless I've got something wrong, GDS doesn't search Gmail which seems rather odd to say the least (but it hasn't finished indexing yet, so maybe I'm jumping the gun).
• RSS feed for comments on this post.
• Join the Search Engine Journal Email Group and meet other SEO professionals!