Sunday, November 6, 2011

Bad Portents: the death of Google Desktop Search

I didn't see any coverage of the official death of Google Desktop Search (GDS) a couple months ago. While it may have gone quietly into that dark night, its passing troubles me. Back in the XP days, GDS was under active development and it had an absolutely killer set of features, its search was unsurpassed, and it handled all sort of various and sundry types of information.

Nothing has come even close to GDS since then (on windows at least - i can't speak for osx). Windows Search blows chunks, and all its alternatives are even worse. I have no idea what Google's calculation was on this one. Certainly they realized that windows search tools suck. Maybe they just didn't see profit in it (not like that's stopped them in the past)?

It's been a frustrating couple years as google has let GDS fester, has let its desperate user base senesce with a sense of bitterness, and finally called the time of death as September 2011. This funeral leaves me with no closure. I need desktop search. You need desktop search. We all need desktop search. Who's going to give it to us? Certainly not Microsoft. If not google, then who?