The Coming Local File Search Wars
Now that Google and other engines have indexed billions of pages on the Web, what's the next big frontier in search?

It is to bring that technology home by extending search to your local desktop. How many of us have multi-gigabyte hard drives now with hundreds, or even thousands of documents, images, spread sheets, and other files that we wish we could find in an instant? You know you took notes on a certain topic in a meeting with a client several years ago, but what was the name of that document? Where is it now?
Microsoft Windows provides a file search function, but if you've ever used its text search against a hard drive that contained thousands of files, you know how painfully slow it can be. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do a search for any keyword contained in any document or e-mail, and have all the best matching files appear instantly, ranked by relevancy, like Google does so well with Web documents? That's what Microsoft, Google, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, and others are all promising in the near future.
HotBot, owned by Terra Lycos, has fired one of the first shots in the local file search wars. HotBot Desktop is a free browser toolbar that promises to quickly search various types of documents and e-mail files on your hard drive. The tool is still in beta, so my first experience with it was not so positive. Fortunately, consumers should have multiple local search tools to choose from before the end of the year, with most of them expected to be free.
AskJeeves announced its acquisition this month of Tukaroo, Inc., a private desktop search company. Reportedly, this was in response to Google's plans to expand into local file search.
Microsoft has made it no secret that it plans to integrate high-speed local text search into the next version of Windows, code named Longhorn, and expected for release in 2006.
Consequently, Google has announced that it has been quietly developing its own local search tool over the past year, code named "Puffin."
Google even hired a former Microsoft Product Manager to help manage the development of the tool. A pre-cursor of that product may be Google's desktop search tool that can run in the Windows task bar rather than just the user's browser. The tool currently only searches the Web, but expect that to be extended to local file searching in the not so distant future.

Microsoft has announced plans to release a new local file search tool prior to the introduction of Longhorn. According to a recent New York Times article, this could happen before the end of this year. Microsoft has missing launch dates in the past, so my money is on Google's tool hitting the market first, at least as a beta.

How will Google profit from local file search? Presumably, it would be ad supported like its Web based search service, or in its more recently announced Gmail service. Gmail is a free e-mail service that scans your e-mail content for keywords and then tries to display ads relevant to your message's content. Not unexpectedly, this has led to concerns regarding privacy. However, for businesses looking for greater targeted advertising options, it could open up a range of new opportunities.

With the coming tools for indexing all the documents on your computer, the latest question is do you trust Google to have access to all of the information on your hard drive? If not Google, then whom? That's the question consumers and privacy advocates are now asking.

Access to your local files will be the next big battle ground fought over by the major search engines.

Google and others may have an uphill battle if Microsoft integrates its technology into the operating system and keeps it free of keyword scanning ads as with its many other tools bundled for free with Windows. That could give Microsoft the edge in the privacy battle. Microsoft will also be able to leverage its desktop monopoly to bundle its local search tool with every copy of Windows. This, combined with its greater knowledge and control of the operating system can be used to muscle out Google in the same way it did with Netscape in the browser wars. I admire Google for taking on Microsoft in the local file search arena, but I don't envy its uphill battle. The first thing I'd do is come up with a better code-name. A beast called the "Longhorn" sounds like it might spear Google's "Puffin" critter before it makes it out of the corral.
While you're waiting on the major search companies to introduce their own solutions, you might check out tools already available. DtSearch offers a product that is suppose to index your documents and provide fast local text search, but at a price tag of $199. There are probably others.

A tool I've used daily for over ten years for high-speed text search is Micro Logic's Infoselect. Unlike many Personal Information Managers (PIM's), this one is adept at letting you enter or import random, unstructured notes, addresses, documents, etc. to fill thousands of windows and folders. You can then search on any keyword or phrase contained anywhere in your free-form database. In an instant it will pull up all windows that match your search. I can find contact, business, or programming notes from years ago in an instant. It's reached the point where the program acts as my "second-brain" for any detail I can't remember.

Info Select is surprisingly useful for quickly storing and retrieving smaller, random bits of information most of us are flooded with everyday. However, it doesn't help in locating the larger quantities of data tucked away in Microsoft Word documents, e-mails, PDF's, spread sheets, and so forth. For that, you'll need a local full-text search tool that indexes all of your files for rapid retrieval. Fortunately, you should have plenty of low-cost, if not completely free, solutions from which to choose in the near future.




Link (Peter posted @ 20:31)