Google Memex

In a BBC article on Google Desktop Search and personalization, some interesting quotes from Marissa Mayer (Director at Google):

"We think of this as the photographic memory of your computer."

"If there's anything you once saw on your computer screen, we think you should be able to find it again quickly."

This is more than just desktop search. This is clearly inspired by Memex, the "memory extender" described half a century ago. It also sounds similar to the goals of "Stuff I've Seen", a research project at Microsoft. Everything you've ever seen on your computer is easy available again.

Others (A9, Seruku, Ask, My Yahoo Search, Microsoft) have a similar vision, but this is the first time I've seen it from Google. Because of privacy concerns, Google has been resistant to maintaining this type of data in the past, but those concerns seem to be gone now.