Google Inc. Thursday rolled out a preliminary version of its new desktop search tool, making the first move against its major competitors in the race to provide tools for finding information buried in computer hard drives.
The Google Desktop offering takes direct aim at Microsoft Corp., which bought a desktop search business in July, as well as current and expected desktop product releases from other companies such as Apple Computer Inc., Ask Jeeves Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.
Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, Yahoo Inc. and Google are all going head-to-head in the Web search market to tap into the advertising revenue generated by ads displayed alongside search results.
Google Desktop allows users to search e-mail in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, chat threads in AOL Instant Messenger, as well as Web pages viewed in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It also helps users search plain text, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, among other things.
Google, which in mid-August raised $1.67 billion in an IPO and next week is slated to report financial results for the first time as a public company, said the software is available for free download at http://desktop.google.com.
"Our goal is to have it behave like a photographic memory for your computer," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products, who added that Google users have been requesting a desktop search capability for years.
Jupiter Research analyst Eric Peterson said the challenge for desktop search providers would be getting people to use the tools after they are downloaded.
Google appears to address that concern by integrating desktop and Web search. As a result, people who have downloaded Google Desktop on their machines will be able to search both the Web and their own PC when they go to www.google.com.
Flood of products
Microsoft in July bought Lookout Inc., which makes software that allows Outlook users to quickly find information contained in e-mail inboxes and file folders. Microsoft also is expected to be adding search technology to Longhorn, the next version of its operating system slated for release in 2006.
Microsoft has demonstrated its own software being developed to search through desktop information, and said that it would offer local search "within the next year."
"This is a big challenge, and we're focused on delivering services that will help people quickly and easily tap that data," a Microsoft spokeswoman said. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)
Google's entry into the desktop search market will likely raise the profile of the technology while putting the squeeze on smaller competitors, analysts said.
"Once Google enters the market, because of their huge mindshare, people are going to notice," said Sue Feldman, a research vice president at IDC, who also predicted that Google would elbow some players out.
Current desktop search providers include dtSearch, Enfish, ISYS, X1, ZyLAB, Terra Lycos, Blinkx and Copernic.
Web search company Ask Jeeves, which bought private desktop search company Tukaroo Inc. in June, said it will release its own offering before year-end. Ask Jeeves partners with Google for search advertising.
Elsewhere, Google search and advertising partner AOL is reportedly preparing to roll out desktop search in its upcoming AOL Browser beta.
Apple is expected to add desktop search to its next operating system release, code named Tiger, in the first half of 2005.
