4 ms·

That came, worked very nicely, then went with the first version or two of Google desktop search. Would search web history, local documents - word and excel incl

That came, worked very nicely, then went with the first version or two of Google desktop search. Would search web history, local documents - word and excel included, and present it in an interface much like Google search at the time. Far as I remember all data was kept locally - it wasn't the Googleplex hoovering up yet another terabyte of your data trail or I wouldn't have touched it. Then it started to deprecate the useful part, gain a GUI, and morph into a second-rate widget engine. By the last couple of versions I came across it was a mostly useless, very second rate copy of Konfabulator (later Yahoo Widgets). It no longer had any local document and web indexing.

Reelin 7y ago
I had no idea. How is something so amazingly functional and immediately useful allowed to disappear? It just seems like such an obvious thing to build into a browser engine.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  No idea - a quick skim, and the first version was the one I liked most. It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon. With a bit of thought, the later versions did retain some local search, but made it clunky and awkward. I forget quite how, only that I liked it less and less. Course before too long it was discontinued entirely. Odd really as it, to me, is the obvious use of my computer for my web activity... Here's the original press release and a couple of screen shots: http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-desktop-search.html http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-des...
  - severine 7y ago
    > It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon For the local filesystems full-text almost instantaneous search, definitely check Recoll: http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html Recoll will index an MS-Word document stored as an attachment to an e-mail message inside a Thunderbird folder archived in a Zip file (and more...). It will also help you search for it with a friendly and powerful interface, and let you open a copy of a PDF at the right page with two clicks. There is little that will remain hidden on your disk.
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    Baloo and Milou on the KDE desktop is often decried for performance reasons, but is quite powerful. I like how it can perform full-text search in my documents (pdf, etc). It also searches your e-mails if you use Kmail (and contacts, events, etc if you use other KDE PIM tools). I only wish it was a bit less eager to extract files on underpowered laptops, and it would be nice if it could OCR pdfs and tag images (facial recognition, etc).
    - severine 7y ago
      For the PDF/OCR task I just discovered Paperwork, I think it's a Gnome project. https://openpaper.work/ https://openpaper.work/ Seems apropos.
- pjc50 7y ago
  At a guess, it wasn't amenable to ad-monetisation and people weren't willing to pay for it. And the average person has already moved far more of their life to "the cloud" to free themselves of the burden of local system administration.
eitland 7y ago
Miss it an awful lot. Another seriously nifty thing it would do if you allowed it to was to collect rss feeds from sites you visited and magically sift out stuff it knew I would be interested in.

Reelin 7y ago

I had no idea. How is something so amazingly functional and immediately useful allowed to disappear? It just seems like such an obvious thing to build into a browser engine.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
No idea - a quick skim, and the first version was the one I liked most. It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon. With a bit of thought, the later versions did retain some local search, but made it clunky and awkward. I forget quite how, only that I liked it less and less. Course before too long it was discontinued entirely. Odd really as it, to me, is the obvious use of my computer for my web activity... Here's the original press release and a couple of screen shots: http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-desktop-search.html http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/10/google-announces-des...
- severine 7y ago
  > It would search Thunderbird emails too with a plugin, was instantaneous, and for a little while was a huge productivity boon For the local filesystems full-text almost instantaneous search, definitely check Recoll: http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/index.html Recoll will index an MS-Word document stored as an attachment to an e-mail message inside a Thunderbird folder archived in a Zip file (and more...). It will also help you search for it with a friendly and powerful interface, and let you open a copy of a PDF at the right page with two clicks. There is little that will remain hidden on your disk.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  Baloo and Milou on the KDE desktop is often decried for performance reasons, but is quite powerful. I like how it can perform full-text search in my documents (pdf, etc). It also searches your e-mails if you use Kmail (and contacts, events, etc if you use other KDE PIM tools). I only wish it was a bit less eager to extract files on underpowered laptops, and it would be nice if it could OCR pdfs and tag images (facial recognition, etc).
  - severine 7y ago
    For the PDF/OCR task I just discovered Paperwork, I think it's a Gnome project. https://openpaper.work/ https://openpaper.work/ Seems apropos.
pjc50 7y ago
At a guess, it wasn't amenable to ad-monetisation and people weren't willing to pay for it. And the average person has already moved far more of their life to "the cloud" to free themselves of the burden of local system administration.

eitland 7y ago

Miss it an awful lot. Another seriously nifty thing it would do if you allowed it to was to collect rss feeds from sites you visited and magically sift out stuff it knew I would be interested in.