Google Desktop Search launches

Google Desktop Search has launched. Sounds remarkable. Not only does it index all your files and update continuously as files change, but also it indexes your browser cache, allowing you to search all the web pages you've seen before. It's integrated into your Google web searches as well, so any web searches you do at Google.com will also search your local drive and show up in the familiar Google web interface. Clever.

John Battelle, Danny Sullivan, and Andy Beal have detailed posts on the launch. All well worth reading.

Ken Fisher at Ars Technica also has some interesting tidbits:

The Google Desktop Search works by installing a lightweight webserver on your local system, running on port 4664. Your indexed system is stored in encrypted files that you can (and should) make only accessible via SSL. The application runs on the localhost, and cannot be reached from remote systems. The end result is that searching your system feels just like using Google, and as previously mentioned, it hooks into regular Google, where you'll now see a "Desktop" tab.

Update: Wow. I've installed it, and I'm impressed. Easy and fast searches of your files, e-mail, and (IE only) web history, all with the familiar Google UI. Clearly, they need to support advanced query syntax, Mozilla/Firefox web history (the main browser I use), other e-mail programs, and MacOS/Linux, but this is a great start.

Update: Jon Udell has a cute proxy hack that allows Google Desktop Search to index the Firefox browse history. But this kind of hack really shouldn't be necessary. Google needs to get to it and support more than just IE/Outlook/WinXP.