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A new experimental Google app for Windows
- Toby1VC 1y agoPlease make it so downvotes (thumbs down) requires a double click. I don't want to send hurtful signals when I accidentally hit that.
- dominicrose 1y agoFirst you would have to have the permission to downvote.
- Dwedit 1y agoThere is an unvote link.
- Toby1VC 1y agoThat was a generic comment for LLM developers to take note for any product, I hate downvoting useful responses by accident.
- xnx 1y agoGlad to see Google bring back an official search bar to Windows after discontinuing Google Desktop in 2011. IIRC ctrl,ctrl was the shortcut to pop up that search bar. Now if only Google would bring back the Google One Windows VPN client.
- lysace 1y agoIs it too cynical to assume that their goal is to get more data for their LLMs?
- freedomben 1y agoNo I'm sure that's part of it. Also about gaining market share.
- nwhnwh 1y ago"to help you find what you need, faster" yeah, I know you care about me, google.
- GrumpyGoblin 1y agoAaaaaand it's shut down
- bitpush 1y agoWould you rather have Big Tech sit on their cash and not innovate? Some of these ones would 100% fail, and that's the nature of doing business. Apple is trying something radical with Vision Pro. It isnt successful, but I'm glad they are trying it. Microsoft did something crazy with Windows Recall. Will I use it? Nope, I appreciate the risk taking. When your friend comes upto you and says "We're starting a business", do you immediately go like "haha, you're gonna lose?" My wish is folks on hacker news have a bit of humility about these kind of things.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago> When your friend comes upto you and says "We're starting a business", do you immediately go like "haha, you're gonna lose?" No, because my friend (presumably) doesn't have an extensive track record of failing in business. But Google does have an extensive track record of killing products for no good reason. Precedent matters, and at this point it's foolish to start using any Google product that you don't have to.
- bitpush 1y ago> killing products for no good reason To you. If you dont understand the reason, again, I encourage you to be humble and try to understand what is going on. Remember, all of these companies are operated by perfectly reasonable people.
- GrumpyGoblin 1y agoThis is a ridiculous reply. I'm not friends with Google. We're frenemies at best. Google has zero reason to keep this effort going. It won't make them any significant money. If I were a bettin' man, and I am, I'd say it's a promotion project for some developer or team who is going to abandon it as soon as they move on. Which is SOP for Google.
- eviks 1y ago> instantly search for information from ... of course, the web. Why would I need random web garbage when searching my "computer files, installed apps, Google Drive files" (even apps don't fit, but at least that's a tiny set)
- hulitu 1y agoFor your security and convenience. Google has access to your Android phone, but, there are evil people who use computers. Google would like to know - like Microsoft and Apple - what are those people doing with their computers. /s
- bigyabai 1y agoFor your information - when you repeatedly tag transgressive comments as /s, you reveal more about your personal insecurities than what the opposition has to say. If you have a good argument to make, make it. Comments like this one don't progress either side's understanding of the situation and devalues valuable discussion into hysteria (likely because you just dislike the consequences). PG realized it decades ago, despite his personal dysfunctions: https://themindcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Grahams_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.png https://themindcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Gra...
- babypuncher 1y agoThis is my biggest problem with a lot of modern desktop search. Search in the Start Menu has been doing this by default for years. If I wanted to search the internet, I would have used the search box in my browser that is already open 24/7. This doesn't add any convenience, it just pollutes search results with irrelevant garbage. But the goal with these things isn't to provide a better user experience. It's to juice engagement metrics, because our industry sucks.
- amluto 1y ago> already open 24/7 I have, sadly, started closing Safari so that my laptop is still charged the next time I open it.
- qwertytyyuu 1y agoMaybe if can index my files as well, better than microsft
- herf 1y ago"Try it for yourself by opting into the experiment in Labs." This is a really confusing call to action.
- paxys 1y agoWhat is confusing about it?
- IshKebab 1y agoI think he was expecting it to be an app download, forgetting that Google can push this feature to everyone via Chrome.
- stronglikedan 1y agoGiven the context, it seems unambiguous to me.
- addicted 1y agoInstall Google For Windows... until Lucy pulls the football again. How does Google expect anyone to trust them. I absolutely loved the Google Windows search app, and even went as far as fighting for our org to install the google appliance, only for Google to pull the rug out from under us. They have Exchange solutions working for over 2 decades but the Google Appliance barely lasted 5 years.
- nine_k 1y agoPress Alt+Space to activate? Nobody activate window menus from keyboard any more?
- EvanAnderson 1y agoI do, every day. It's part of my muscle memory to maximize windows.
- xnx 1y agoIt's a little annoying that this Google app steals the alt+space shortcut, but you can remap it.
- saelthavron 1y agoMany people don't know how to cut and paste via the keyboard. The vast majority aren't even aware of Alt+Space. The only reason I use Alt+Space is to recover windows from off-screen areas.
- gostsamo 1y agoI'm blind and alt+space is sometimes the best way to access select/copy/paste on the terminal. some other apps that have terrible a11y experience as well, but usually I use it there to closethe app asap.
- saelthavron 1y agoIs the terminal you're referring to within, outside, or both within and outside a windowing system? How does it work? I'm not able to find an instance where alt+space does anything related to select/copy/paste.
- xnx 1y agoYou can also activate by clicking the "G" system tray icon.
- omeromr 1y ago
- TiredOfLife 1y agoI get "Search Labs isn’t available for your account right now" Seeing the Google Labs name brought back bad memories. Google had an amazing app called Google Talk. It was small, fast and you could chat from your computer to somebody's Gmail account. But then Google announced labs version of google talk. It was slow and broke local video playback. And then that was replaced with a crappy extension you had to run in their browser thus ending Googles short small useful app story.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoWasn't this done (20!) years ago? It seems very familiar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop#Results_list:_title_meta_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop#Results_list:_t...
- paxys 1y agoGoogle Desktop was mainly for local file search. Shame that the idea never really took off, and even today local search is hopelessly broken on both Windows and Mac.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoIt did take off. There were server pizza boxes and everything. It was killed in 2011 by the very same company that is now introducing it as a "new app" in 2025. https://www.ebay.com/itm/283722910233 https://www.ebay.com/itm/283722910233 https://web.archive.org/web/20060112110931/https://desktop.google.com/enterprise/about.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060112110931/https://desktop.g... The dead Internet theory continues to prevail. What is old is new again because nothing new can be created. The Hollywood reboots formula works, so we continue it with technology reboots.
- paxys 1y agoThose boxes were for enterprises, not for you to plug into your laptop.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoRight. The box wasn't necessary to search, but was an indicator of Google Desktop's success. Furthermore, we can still leverage the dead binary with just a little system hacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ieNv7oelk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ieNv7oelk
- gcr 1y agoWhat's the relationship between the search appliance and Google Desktop? I'm not seeing any connection.
- hu3 1y agoit's hard to compete with other launchers like: - Microsoft PowerToys Run https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys - Keypirinha https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha - Flow Launcher https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher If they can index google photos and gmail too then I might try.
- frfl 1y agoIf you have the top market position already in browsers and search, pretty easy to get people onto a product like this regardless of whether better alternatives exist.
- balls187 1y agoIsn't that how MS and Google lost anti-trust cases?
- amluto 1y agoAre you sure they lost? If the CEOs had perfect crystal balls and knew that those particular business practices would result in the penalties that they got in their court cases, I bet they still would have done the same things.
- balls187 1y agoNot that I am an expert in each case, but as part of the evidence was that people in leadership/decision making positions were informed that their practices and conduct was unlawful. > Are you sure they lost? Well, Chrome and not Microsoft's browser is the dominant webbrowser, and at the heart of MSFT's anti trust case was bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. So, yes. MS did lose.
- frfl 1y agoMS got hit kinda hard back in the 2000s right? But since then most cases have been nothing more than slaps on the wrist? Have any major companies faced dire consequences for their anticompetitive practice. So why would they stop using their market position in ways that benefit them and at worst result in minor fines or wrist slaps?
- sigmar 1y agoBet they're anticipating that at some point in the future they might want gemini to interface with your PC (ala Claude's "computer use" and openai's "operator")
- nikeee 1y agoHonestly I'd expect some new Web API built into chrome for this
- DashAnimal 1y agoOk gave this a try. Actually pretty handy. I wish I didn't clean up my Windows PC so I could compare indexing of files, but it did a good job of finding most things but the things I searched for Windows was able to find too. But its nice to have an easy shortcut to Google search and also having Google Lens on my PC to translate text, ask questions about a screenshot etc. I love this feature on my android. The UI is a little annoying at times. Some apps receive the alt+space key so it doesn't always behave like you expect. Checking Task Manager it used about 43MB of memory whether running as a background process or in the foreground, showing search results.
- stronglikedan 1y agoSorry Google, but Alt+Space is already used by Powertoys Run. At least have the decency to pick a combo that isn't already being used by your competition. So classless, but I suppose that's par for the course. (I know the hotkey combo is customizable, but it's still offputting that they chose that one.)
- xnx 1y agoalt+space was already a Windows window menu hotkey since Windows 3.1
- diffeomorphism 1y agoAny launcher on any OS uses alt+space or win+space. Weird that you think this is somehow a power toys thing.
- chem83 1y agoThe decency? Classless? PowerToys is not installed by default and neither is this Google app, obviously. It's absolutely reasonable that Google picks the most intuitive and common shortcut for an app launcher and if the user wants to maintain two or more launchers, it's up to them to configure non-conflicting keyboard shortcuts that are the most intuitive to them.
- zb3 1y agoWhat about releasing the source of Android 16 QPR1 instead? Forgot about that one?
- 4899641178855 1y agoWhile I'm at it, let me mail my hard drives and birth certificate to the Google offices.
- altonw 1y agoI wonder how an LLM built with this Google app would do compared to one built with Recall data. Even though it might not get the same raw info as Recall I see it having more than enough to be competitive.
- lentil_soup 1y agoHighly recommend Everything instead. It's so freaking fast, can search by keywords, can sort by time change to see what files are being touched in real time, can search any "cloud" file if you have them locally ... And no ads! https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/ https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/
- bitpush 1y agoDoes it have Gemini?
- Alifatisk 1y agoI love Everything + Wox (www.wox.one), have been my default setup on all Windows installs But Google App is more than a search bar for filesystem, it's like Perplexity
- gregschlom 1y agoI'm a big fan of Everything (and recently donated to the developer). I tried this Google app and was pleased to see that it seems just as fast as Everything for local file search. Presumably they use the same underlying mechanism for searching files (something about hooking into the NTFS index). I might give it a shot. (disclaimer: I work at Google, but nothing related to this app)
- linhns 1y agoStick this with Powertoys Run or Command Palette then your windows can become pretty powerful.
- trollbridge 1y ago… in other words, submit all of the data on your PC to Google to train their LLMs on.
- TYPE_FASTER 1y agoExactly what I was wondering. Also, they are probably trying to figure out how to replace search traffic that switched to ChatGPT.
- bitpush 1y agoSince you're on HN, I assume you have a bit of curiosity so I encourage you to think beyond the first order effect of some of these news. It isnt as much as "omg, we need more data!!" but as some of the other comments show, it is _probably_ part of a larger defensive move where most LLMs are moving into controlling-the-pc domain. OpenAI has something, Claude has something, so it is reasonable to expect Google to do something as well. The fact that it is Gemini is another clue that it is indeed that.
- aragonite 1y agoPlease consider making the UI respect the user's custom text scaling settings for accessibility. I'm not referring to DPI scaling but the TextScaleFactor value at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Accessibility (see [1][2]) that users can set in Ease of Access > Display > Make text bigger. (Failing that, adding basic support for scaling text or UI via ctrl+plus/minus would be a huge improvement!) With the exception of Chromium/Chrome [3] this's been a persistent issue with Windows desktop apps from Google (most of these also use hard-coded control sizes making the problem worse). [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/input/text-scaling https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/input/... [2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.ui.viewmanagement.uisettings.textscalefactor?view=winrt-26100 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.ui.viewman... [3] https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40586200 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40586200
- johnh-hn 1y agoI'm split with this. If it helps other people, then I'm all for it. But speaking as someone who is legally blind and makes extensive use of these settings, Windows 10 accessibility drives me mad. I'm waiting for fractional scaling to improve for Linux so I can make the switch. The problem with Make text bigger and Make everything bigger is they apply to every single application that supports them. Let's say I have two applications: A is comfortable enough to see and B isn't. If I change either of these settings to help me use B, A could now be a problem because it can take up too much screen real estate, which makes it unusable for a different reason. This doesn't sound like much of a problem until you have 5 or more applications you're trying to balance via these two settings. In reality, it's more complex than I'm describing because I may need to change both settings to help with a new application, which then means I have to continuously test every other application I use to make sure they're all somewhat comfortable enough to use. If an application I use updates to include support for these settings, I have to go through all this unplanned work again to try and make everything usable once more. It's frustrating. I know people make fun of Electron, but one major plus point for me is I have per application scaling when using it, and so it gives me better accessibility than Windows does by far. > (Failing that, adding basic support for scaling text or UI via ctrl+plus/minus would be a huge improvement!) I'd consider this to be a better option.
- caminanteblanco 1y agoFinally a competitor to spotlight search on Mac
- lxgr 1y agoI believe Raycast (which I like a lot on macOS) also has an upcoming Windows version.
- ZeroCool2u 1y agoExactly what I was thinking! I like spotlight a lot more than the Windows start menu.
- jaybna 1y agoGoogle Toolbar is back, baby!
- jaybna 1y agoLooks like they forgot to scrub an old confirmation page too - I can still join Google+! https://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/done.html https://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/done.html
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- breadwinner 1y agoWith anything Google you have to worry about privacy. Where is the privacy policy? Does it associate information it finds on your PC to your Google identity?
- encom 1y agoOn a related note: WHY does the stock calculator and clock apps on my Google Pixel phone even have a fucking privacy policy?
- giobox 1y agoI don't find this particularly egregious - Google has long required ALL apps on the Android store to provide a privacy policy, even if they collect no data whatsoever. A privacy policy can help confirm the absence of data collection as much as it can also be used to explain how collected data (if any) is used. If anything it's a helpful change, as it provides a standardized way for apps to confirm they collect no data. Any app submitted to the iOS store has the same requirement to provide a privacy policy too, and again even if no data is collected.
- nerdsniper 1y agoI can't find any privacy policy at all. There's a bullet point on the page about "search history" but nothing that I can comprehensively analyze. It can search my files so without any additional information I have to assume any/all contents of my documents might be sent to google for more efficient indexing. General note for app developers: Try to think of the worst, most sociopathic things you could do with your app's level of access. Then reassure your customers by using your privacy policy to create a legal obligation never to do the things which would enable the ability to do those things. If you don't tell me you're not doing it (in a way that I can clearly sue you if you do), I have to assume that you are doing the absolute worst things your app is technically capable of doing with the data it has access to. That's just the way the world works these days.
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago>It can search my files so without any additional information I have to assume any/all contents of my documents might be sent to google for more efficient indexing. Or even AI training, your companies secret sauce recipe might be regurgitated on demand for your competitors.
- groos 1y agoWhy would I use it, when it has every possibility of getting yanked in the future?
- readdit 1y agoAgreed. Won't be falling for that trap. Personally it's very hard to trust Google consumer products existing after 2-3 years.
- xyzelement 1y agoDoesn't everyone and everything have a chance of getting yanked? If this really makes your life better (assuming it does) for two years and then ends, didn't it give you two good years?
- LtWorf 1y agoI can't wait for this to be abandoned in a couple of years!
- crowcroft 1y agoSuspect this is another surface they want to play around with as a gateway into an AI/ChatGPT like experience. Google have wanted to get people out of the web and into an app for a long time and have mostly failed because traditional search is so tied to the open web. AI Search is a lot less tied to the open web (for better or worse) and so apps make a lot more sense.
- mandeepj 1y ago> Google have wanted to get people out of the web Why do you say that? And, why do they botch their own cash cow - AdWords?
- crowcroft 1y agoBringing search into an app and then consolidating the web experience there is more surface area for ads, not less.
- Drew_ 1y agoHow does a native app provide any "more surface area" for ads than a web page? Are they not displaying on the same screen?
- lmz 1y agoThey could frame the in-app content in ads. They wouldn't be able to do that using iframes on the web. (I guess in theory if they ... exploit Chrome then they could put ads there too).
- Drew_ 1y agoI suppose they technically could overlay more ads, but they've already had mobile apps, Chrome and Chrome OS for decades and have never gone that far for obvious reasons.
- 1y ago
- greatgib 1y agoI can't get ride of this shit on my Android phone, I can't imagine the nightmare to be inflicted that annoying this on my computer too...
- timeon 1y agoIs it bigger spyware than the website?
- huhtenberg 1y ago> just press Alt + Space This is how you access the system menu of a specific window. That standard thing at the top left that has "Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize" and "Close" options. In particular, Alt-Space, X is a pretty damn useful keyboard shortcut for maximizing current window. Kinda weird that no one in on this app's team knows that.
- devinprater 1y agoAll they know is that's how spotlight on their Mac works and that Copilot and ChatGPT opens.
- anaisbetts 1y agoChatGPT does the same thing :-/ This is why Claude Desktop explicitly uses Ctrl-Alt-Space on Windows as its default shortcut rather than Alt-Space
- AlienRobot 1y ago>search for information from your computer files Absolutely not. This is trying to turn a desktop computer into a mobile phone. I'm sure everyone already understands this, but just to be clear: There is NEVER, just NEVER, ABSOLUTELY NEVER, going to be a SINGLE QUERY that you want to search BOTH your local files AND the web for. If you want to search the web, you open the web browser. If you want to search your local files, you want privacy which means you don't want the query going to the online search engine. It's a catastrophic privacy risk to put both things in the same box just for the convenience to not have to open the web browser, which is completely pointless either way because you're going to have the browser later anyway if you want a web result. I'm convinced that Microsoft, Google and (once) Canonical do this fully knowing that some people don't take their own privacy seriously with computer devices or lack the understanding to do so, and when they start letting these things happen and accepting these intrusions, it becomes normalized and suddenly nobody has any privacy left. In the future all your local files will be posted to web servers automatically all the time without consent because that's just what will be the "normal" and accepted pattern by then. This already happens with OneDrive. People get their files sent to Microsoft all the time having no idea it is happening. Google Drive is the same for mobile. People use the "cloud" barely understanding that their data is in someone else's computer, and in many cases without even being aware that they are using the cloud in first place. The worst of all is that even if you wanted this, in 5 years it's probably going to be "sunsetted" anyway since it's Google.
- anaisbetts 1y agoIt's actually also already built into Windows if you have a Copilot+ PC, hit Windows-Q to activate it
- autoexec 1y ago> This is trying to turn a desktop computer into a mobile phone. Windows itself is trying to turn a desktop computer into a mobile phone. I try to avoid google and windows because of privacy issues already, but even without them I'm afraid it's only going to get harder to own a computer that does work for you without also being used against you by somebody else.
- always_imposter 1y ago[dead]
- pentagrama 1y agoThis feels like a departure from Google’s usual approach. On desktop, Google has historically pushed everything into the browser, especially Chrome where they enjoy massive market share. Aside from some experiments in the 2000s like Google Desktop, they have not really released native Windows apps in the past decade. Mobile is different, Google has plenty of native apps on Android and iOS. But on desktop almost everything has been browser based such as YouTube, Gmail or Docs. Personally, I would love to see something like a native YouTube Music app similar to Spotify instead of being locked into a browser tab. I think part of this shift comes from the pressure of modern native apps like ChatGPT’s desktop client. With a quick shortcut like Alt+Space you instantly open a search/chat box, that kind of OS level integration is not possible with a browser or even with PWAs. So while this might look like a small product announcement, I see it as a bit of a paradigm change for Google.
- thevillagechief 1y agoIt also probably started as a hedge for the divesture from Chrome that DoJ was seeking.
- jgbmlg 1y agoI still use Google desktop on a dedicated computer to search our local network. Its been running since about 2008.
- lawlessone 1y agoSeems like a data grab
- breadwinner 1y agoFor those who are reluctant to install a Google product on your computer (who knows what it will hoover up and associate with your Google identity), you can use Lucene to index your files: https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka https://github.com/wisercoder/eureka
- SomeHacker44 1y agoI cannot tell. Is this a whole system indexing application? Instant search across all installed documents? I have nearly 40TB on my primary windows desktop computer and would LOVE that. Granted much of that is decades of home video but still.
- homeonthemtn 1y agoWhy would anyone trust Google with features and services anymore? They'll run with it a bit, maybe release it, then abandon it shortly there after and eventually shut it down.
- whywhywhywhy 1y agoThey've used their own search in the past 5 years right? Because it barely works, barely gives any results, straight up pretends queries have only 9 results that before they ruined it would have returned 6 figures of results. In 10 years Google will be known for Android and Maps, I don't think they'll even be known for YouTube because TikTok if they dropped a web longform spin on their algo they'd displace YT within 3 years.
- nashashmi 1y agoThe most exciting thing for windows in a decade to come up. Remember when this was the norm in 2010?
- neves 1y agoWhy everyone hijacks alt-space? Same key for copilot
- agoodusername63 1y agoif this was most other companies or a random github project with decent activity I'd trust this more than installing software from Google on my computer during a time they're extremely interested in building data sets for ML work.
- Pxtl 1y agoThis is the opposite of what I want. I want the cool android-only stuff they build to be available on the web, not the web to be available on the desktop.
- Cameri 1y agoWould this be Google not admitting that AI/ChatGPT are eating into Search usage?
- sakesun 1y agoI think this could be the first step to offer a more aggressive AI service similar to Microsoft Copilot Vision.
- 1-6 1y agoAlt+Space Several apps already fight for that keyboard shortcut sequence. Claude, now this...
- rkagerer 1y agoSorry, but Launchy already has my ALT+SPACE shortcut and all my user love!
- Iwan-Zotow 1y agoDo they use own index?
- snthpy 1y agoAlt+Space is already a universal shortcut key binding on Windows.
- drumhead 1y agoIs this just Google Desktop again?
- shaky-carrousel 1y agoNice! I wonder when it's going to get abandoned. I give it one year.
- mococa 1y agoIt really surprises me that Google is going back to making desktop software outside of Chrome, certainly because of the native ChatGPT client.
- skarz 1y agoAnyone remember Google Desktop[1] that had built in search? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop
- DmitryOlshansky 1y agoI guess this will be killed soon enough, like so many Google projects.
- AfterHIA 1y agoThe design is totally stolen from Ubiquity. I love Ubiquity so I'm not complaining but the Raskin clan should get some credit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_(Firefox) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_(Firefox)
- pxoe 1y agoAll of these "desktop search bars for everything" look way too generic for there to be really anything "stolen" either way. Credit for what?
- AfterHIA 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface The design methodology goes way back. If you're in the Bay Area go to the Computer History Museum and inquire with a Mr. Ted Nelson. People have been singing this gospel for years and now that, "everyone's shit out of ideas" suddenly the Bigs get wise to, "humane UI patterns?" I don't buy it. Specifically summoning a text prompt with a UI short-hand is copyrightable; especially if you're Nintendo or Google or Apple. Go ask Larry Tesler if Ted Nelson isn't taking appointments.
- pxoe 1y agoWhere does Ubiquity, of all things, slot into this?
- hosteur 1y agoWhy would anyone let Google run a local app to index their local files given that their business model is to spy on you against your interests?