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Google Desktop is desktop search software made by Google for Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. The program allows text searches of a user’s e-mails, computer files, music, photos, chats, Web pages viewed, and other “Google Gadgets.”

As of January 2008, Google Desktop features the following functionality:

[edit] File indexing

After initially installing Google Desktop, the software completes an indexing of all the files in the computer. And after the initial indexing is completed, the software continues to index files as needed. Users can start searching for files immediately after installing the program. After performing searches, results can also be returned in an Internet browser on the Google Desktop Home Page much like the results for Google Web searches.

Google Desktop can index several different types of data, including email, web browsing history from Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, office documents in the OpenDocument and Microsoft Office formats, instant messenger transcripts from AOL, Google, MSN, Skype, Tencent QQ, and several multimedia file types. Additional file types can be indexed through the use of plug-ins.[1] Google Desktop allows the user to control which types of data are indexed by the program.

One unfortunate aspect for users with large hard drives: Google Desktop only indexes 100,000 files per drive during the initial indexing period. If you have more than 100,000 files in a particular drive, Google Desktop won’t index all of them during this initial period. However, Google Desktop adds files to your index during real-time indexing when you move or open them. [2]

A prominent feature of Google Desktop is the Sidebar, which holds several common Gadgets and resides off to one side of the desktop. The Sidebar is available with the Microsoft Windows version of Google Desktop only. The Sidebar comes pre-installed with the following gadgets:

* Email – a panel which lets one view one’s Gmail messages.
* Scratch Pad – here one can store random notes; they are saved automatically
* Photos – displays a slideshow of photos from the “My Pictures” folder (address can be changed)
* News – shows the latest headlines from Google News, and how long ago they were written. The News panel is personalized depending on the type of news you read.
* Weather – shows the current weather for a location specified by the user.
* Web Clips – shows recent posts from RSS news feeds.
* Google Talk – If Google Talk is installed, double clicking the window title will dock it to one’s sidebar.

Like the Windows Taskbar, the Google Desktop sidebar can be set to Auto-Hide mode, where it will only appear once the user moves the mouse cursor towards the side where it resides. If not on auto-hide, by default the sidebar will always take up about 1/6 – 1/9 of one’s screen (depending on the screen resolution), and other windows are forced to resize. However, the sidebar can be resized to take less space, and you can disable the “always on top” feature in the options. With the auto-hide feature on, the sidebar temporarily overlaps maximized windows.

Another feature that comes with the Sidebar is alerts. When the Sidebar is minimized, new e-mail and news can be displayed on a pop-up window above the Windows Taskbar.