Indexing the Desktop
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Microsoft is ultimately the largest threat to Google due to the sheer market dominance of the Windows operating system. Google's strategy is clear: They are not going to wait for an advanced search technology from Microsoft to become part of the operating system, but will make the desktop part of Google.
Bill Gates has been blathering on about a "Digital Nervous System" for no less than fifteen years. The digital nervous system is the seamless connection and integration of any and all resources needed for research and collaboration. MSN offers a fairly competitive search engine among many other services such as email and news with much success. Oddly enough, Microsoft Windows has a ferociously slow and relatively useless local search that is incapable of actually peeking around in file contents. There is no seamless way to search your entire computer for text that could reside in a Word document or in an email. Cue the latest breed of search engine: Google Desktop.
Google has offered the most dominant search engine on the web for the past few years. The company recently went public with the most successful IPO since the dot com era came to an end. Google offers some of the best advertising on the net through their Ad Words program and they even offer a full set of APIs for developers to integrate google.com features such as web searching and sponsored links into their own sites. On October 14, 2004, Google announced the beta launch of Google Desktop.
"It's like photographic memory for your computer -- if you've seen it before, you should be able to find it," said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products at Google. For users who are frustrated with losing track of files, this could be the solution.
Industry experts see this is as a direct move to preempt Redmond-based software titan Microsoft who has touted new and advanced search features in their upcoming but often delayed Windows operating system codenamed Longhorn. Analysts and investors suggest that Microsoft is ultimately the largest threat to Google due to the sheer market dominance of the Windows operating system. Google's strategy is clear: rather than wait for the advanced search to become part of the operating system, they are making the desktop part of Google.
Next: Features of the Google Desktop Application >>
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