p2p news / p2pnet: Remember when Google first launched its desktop search application?

“Users of the Google Desktop Search software beware - it indexes your files across all users on your PC, bypassing user protections,” said Dioscaido on slashdot. “The Google cache feature allows all users to browse the contents of messages and files it has indexed, irrespective of who is logged in. ‘This is not a bug, rather a feature,’ says Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer Web products. ‘Google Desktop Search is not intended to be used on computers that are shared with more than one person’.

“Reminds me of a Neal Stephenson essay: ‘The Hole Hawg is dangerous because it does exactly what you tell it to. It is not bound by the physical limitations that are inherent in a cheap drill, and neither is it limited by safety interlocks that might be built into a homeowner’s product by a liability-conscious manufacturer. The danger lies not in the machine itself but in the user’s failure to envision the full consequences of the instructions he gives to it’.”

Meet Google Desktop 3, released today.

“The new version comes loaded with features that make finding and sharing information even easier and more fun than before,” Google promises on its blog.

And among the new features is Search Across Computers which, “makes it seamless to search the content of your documents and web history from any of your computers”.

To make it thus, users need to store their hard drive indexes on Google servers instead of their own systems and, “This applies to your Web history (from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, and Mozilla); Microsoft Word documents; Microsoft Excel spreadsheets,” Jack Schofield points out in a Guardian Unlimited story.

“Even if Google isn’t evil (or more evil than is commercially necessary), this idea also relies on Google being invulnerable to hackers (including the ones that work for the CIA), and also able to fend off government agencies with subpoenas trawling for information,” he says, adding:

“Of course, you also have to be able to protect and defend your own computers, even when you are out of the house/office. Otherwise the person who nicks your notebook PC may also get access to critical files on your desktops…. including that little Notepad file where you keep all your pins and passwords.”

Also See:
first launched - Google Desktop Search: Spyware?, October 15, 2004
Guardian Unlimited - Google’s new Desktop 3 will let Google store files from your hard disk, February 9, 2006

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 10:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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