i like google, but…

August 25, 2005 under Computers, Software

I’m not sure if I’m on board with their latest offerings.

Earlier this week, I took Google Desktop out for a spin. Feature-wise, it’s great. I enjoyed the sidebar feature as it had all of my subscribed feeds right on my Destkop. I added a system resource, to-do, scratch pad and weather add-ins. It was very handy indeed and I even looked at the SDK because I have a few ideas for my own add-ins. When I decided to look at the Processes tab of the Task Manager, I was shocked, however. GoogleDesktop.exe, GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe, GoogleDesktopDisplay.exe, GoogleDesktopIndex.exe, GoogleDesktopMail.exe. Ok, that’s fair; there are many features to Google Desktop but combined, they appeared to only use about 20MB of RAM. However, when I shut down Google Desktop completely, I regained close to 100MB of RAM. Where did that other 80MB go? I like to run my computer lean without unneccessary background apps or services running and I prefer to use apps with small memory footprints; recall my tirade on iTunes from a couple of years ago (I’ve looked at iTunes again recently and it’s still way too bloated for my tastes). And then there’s Google Desktop‘s integrated desktop search. Do I really want to search the contents of my computer in the same manner that I search on the Web? I think OS X’s Spotlight is the only one that got local searching right, so far. Google Desktop is supposed to index your files during idle time. To me, it seemed like it indexed even when I was doing something. Also, I’m not sure if I’m comfortable having my hard drives indexed. It wouldn’t take too much effort to swipe those files (HT1 and CF1 files) from a malicious add-in.

Google Talk was just released and I’m not sure that I see an immediate need or desire for it. Do we really need another IM and VoIP client? I already use Trillian Basic and Skype (and maybe I’ll replace it with Gizmo soon). Sure, Google Talk uses Jabber on the back-end, but none of the people on my IM contact list use Jabber; it’s all ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM and MSN Messnger (hence, I’m a Trillian user). I do appreciate that Google Talk doesn’t include any advertising; something I hate to see in software (another reason why I use Trillian). “Today’s instant message converstation is brought to you by Jostens. When you think of high school class pictures and rings, think Jostens. Go Jostens!”

Don’t get me wrong, I like Google; I use the advanced features of their search engine all of the time. They are surely capable of displaying a lot of innovation but the new apps that they’re releasing aren’t doing it for me, yet. There’s rumblings that Google are developing an operating system of their own. I can’t fathom where they’re headed with all of this just yet. I do know that I can easily lose a couple of hours of my life at a time while looking for crop circles, military bases and whatnot with Google Earth 😉

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comments: 5 »

5 Responses to "i like google, but…"

  • barry says:

    Good post Chris, I agree with all of this except for google earth. Esther and I tried it out on her pc and I was dissapointed by the free version. Any place I wanted to see other than major centers required the purchased version. This is my first time hearing about Google Desktop, that looks lame. Ive never really understood these web service widgets on the desktop. To me this kinda thing is perfect for dashboard in os X and konfabulator. Btw, chris you are right Spotlight’s meta data searches are unparalleled. It searches email, bookmarks, visited pages, files, itunes db … the whole OS, and whats surprising is how snappy it is.

    I agree with your opinion on google talk as well. NOT ANOTHER IM.. man. However it wouldnt be bad to have all in one like trillian or proteus with a skype layer. On mac we have ichat, if only the windows users could use it Im sure it would take over alone for its video conferencing capabilites. Nasa now officially uses iChat AV for video conferencing.

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat/

    I never heard of a google OS. Thats intriguing….

  • barry says:

    a blog I read has a good article on this as well:

    http://daringfireball.net/2005/08/google_ad_company

  • Chris says:

    As an aside, I’ve downloaded Konfabulator and at this point, I like it much better than Google Desktop (albeit, Konfabulator is a more mature product). I’ve looked at the SDK and it’s pretty slick. It reminds me somewhat of Mozilla‘s XUL; XML for the UI and JavaScript for the processing.

    Got any potential widget suggestions? 😉

  • barry says:

    ive been playing with the idea of making a widget for a long time. I wonder if theres any overlap tween building one for os x and konfab.

  • Chris says:

    I took a quick peek at the Dashboard programming guide and both Konfabulator and Dashboard have similar approaches, but the API‘s are totally different. It might not take too much effort to port one to the other, depending on the widget’s specs of course.

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