Google Desktop 2.0
August 22nd, 2005 -- Posted in 11010011 | No Comments »Google released the second major version of its Google Desktop software. The story can be found here and it can be downloaded here.
From the little I know about this piece of software which I have NOT used extensively, version 1 basically indexed the textual information on your desktop google-style. This made it easier to search documents on your personal machine and there was some integration with the google website w.r.t. search results that came up.
Version 2 has added a bunch of side dishes. The biggest one I’d like to note is the Sidebar feature which basically brings together a bunch of consumer-oriented information (RSS feeds, stocks, weather, to do lists, news headlines, etc.) into one “utility” bar (a la Trillian, but no IM).
I can’t get it to function at work right now (poo on the firewall) but my initial impression is that it reminds me of Yahoo’s recent purchase of Konfabulator. This does almost the exact same thing. The only BIG visual difference is that the Google Desktop brings it all under one interface whereas Konfabulator brings it up under separate windows (splitting hairs here really).
The cool thing about Konfabulator is the extensive set of plugins (widgets) available. I guess it could be a lot cooler if they had a more impressive set to pick from, but currently you could download plugins for grabbing different data (e.g., a Google Maps). The other selling point of this is that there are contributors from the developer community.
Lo and behold, Google desktop does the same thing! How surprising.
I wouldn’t say that one necessarily copied the other, but there is this movement towards aggregating data in this one-stop-shop way for the user.