After the unparalleled success of the Google Search engine, Google Inc. released Google Desktop in Oct 2004. Google Desktop aims at using the powerful algorithms Google uses to search the internet, to help search for files and data on one’s personal computer.
How many times have we forgotten the name of the file we wanted, or don’t remember where exactly it’s stored among the multitude of folders on our hard drive. Google Desktop proves to be a dependable ally in such scenarios when we need files or data fast.
Why would we need to use Google Desktop? Haven’t we been doing fine without it till now? Well, one of the major advantages of Google Desktop is that it highly increases efficiency and greatly reduces the time spent searching for information your computer. When Google Desktop is installed, it initially indexes all the files on your computer. After that it updates the indexes through out the day to ensure it has the latest information. When you search for something on your computer, it instantly brings up the results in Internet Explorer like any other web search, which otherwise could have taken a considerable amount of time to search manually or by using the search provided by Microsoft.
Another advantage is that it has the ability to search files, folders, emails, web history, instant chat records and more. It can search across Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel. It also indexes all your images, audio and video for easy retrieval.
The next time you search the internet using the Google search engine, Google Desktop searches your computer simultaneously and shows the results from your computer alongside the search engine results. This could greatly save time as you may already have the information you need readily available on your computer. Since Google Desktop is used to search for information on your computer, you can also use it offline.
