Google Offers to Search Your Desktop

Some of the real estate coveted most by the Internet giants isn’t on the Internet at all. It’s on your computer hard drive.

Google Inc. unveiled a free software tool Thursday that lets searchers tap into the files on their PC desktops when they hunt for information on the Web. For instance, a Google query for “Lakers” will return not only Web pages but also every e-mail, instant message or Word document on the searcher’s computer that mentions the basketball team.

The move is expected to unleash a flurry of similar products from rivals seeking to create new territory for advertising.

But Google’s biggest adversary may well be the king of the PC desktop -- Microsoft Corp.

“There’s billions at stake now,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. “The battlefields are expanding.”

And overlapping. Google and Microsoft are moving more aggressively onto each other’s turf.

Microsoft is planning to release its own Web and desktop search engines by the end of the year in an effort to head off up-and-comers like Google. Longhorn, the version of Windows expected in late 2006 at the earliest, is expected to let users search the Web and the contents of their computers without having to even open a browser.

So Google is trying to establish a beachhead on the PC desktop first.

Google executives said there was a more straightforward explanation for creating Google Desktop: It fits their mission of helping to organize the world’s information.

Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products for the Mountain View, Calif., company, said the software should “behave like a photographic memory on your computer: If you’ve seen it on your machine, you should be able to search for it and find it.”

Google Desktop creates a record of all the files on the PC, stores it on the user’s computer and updates it every time a new e-mail comes in, a document is created or a Web page is viewed on the machine. (For privacy reasons, users can rope off parts of their hard drives they don’t want to have searched, and they can turn off the archiving function when they surf the Web.)

Then, when a Google searcher types in a search query, the relevant documents from the PC are posted at the top of the results page. That information won’t show up in other people’s Google searches because people’s personal information never leaves their PCs. For now, Google Desktop only works on Windows computers.

Mayer said Google had no immediate plans to plaster ads on PC desktops or on the desktop query results, but she didn’t rule that out for the future.

Finding a better way to search computer hard drives isn’t a new idea. Lycos Inc. of Waltham, Mass., X1 Technologies Inc. of Pasadena and Copernic Technologies Inc. of Newton, Mass., all offer desktop search software.

And others will be following. Ask Jeeves Inc. acquired Tukaroo Inc., a privately held desktop search company, in June. Yahoo Inc. has said it plans to have its search engine find locally stored information. And Time Warner Inc.’s America Online is testing a new browser with desktop search software built in.

But Google has an advantage. More than 60 million people in the United States visit Google.com each month to search the Web. Why not use Google to simultaneously search your PC?

That may be only the beginning for Google Desktop.

Now that Google is indexing the contents of individual PCs, analysts say it’s only a matter of time before the company offers to store copies of those files on its vast farm of computer servers, where it already stores e-mail for its Gmail service. People would be able to access their term papers and PowerPoint presentations from any Internet-connected device -- whether or not it runs Windows.

Mayer, the Google executive, wouldn’t comment on whether that matched the company’s long-range vision.

But if it does, that could mean trouble for Microsoft. The more you can do on the Internet, the less important your PC becomes, analysts agreed.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has been worrying about the Internet making Windows less relevant since 1995. He has responded by spending billions of dollars to develop new Web-based programs and services.

But Justin Osmer, a product manager for Microsoft’s MSN service, said the company’s efforts in search weren’t dictated by Google.

“Our focus is on helping consumers get faster, cleaner and easier access to the information they want,” he said, “not [on] what other companies are doing.”