Thank god it’s only a beta!

Yeah, how funny, Version 3 and Beta are an oxymoron:-)

Anyone know if Yahoo’s Desktop treats this the sameway and if the new Windows File Search will work better? I assume it will.

Copernic Desktop Search is nimble, fast and offers several options for background updating without performance degradation.

Why don’t they just have a re-index feature as a short term fix until they handle this automatically?

Energy Guru: I assumed that Google Desktop search would have handled this better, too. I’m not sure that assumptions mean anything at this point.

The Reason you have Desktop Search is so that it done’t matter where your stuff is and that you never have to move it, because you can always find it. I think…

It also apparently doesn’t index files by filename. Which is absolute insanity to me. 99% of the time, that’s how I want to find a file, not by the content inside. And when I try typing a filename into google desktop search, it returns nothing. Makes me so sad.

I’ve not had it long, but Copernic seems to do exactly what I want.

Mike, I wonder if it doesn’t index the moved file or it index it twice.

Oh my! I bet Google is glad it is still a beta.

Rogel, I have no idea because I will never test the software. I do not want the content of my hard drive indexed on Google’s servers.

Yeah, that’s pretty lame…

To be able to monitor this level of file activty on Windows and then updating the index for the new location may have required developing a lower-level file system filter driver. It’s much more expensive to develop and can blue-screen the machine much easier if drivers in the stack behave badly. It was a design trade-off for sure.

this is just another example of an underwhleming google product. It’s time for quality over quantity.

I’ve noticed this but thought it was just my version of Google Desktop (which is quite old, I don’t want the newer version with the “share across computers” option).

I have also noticed this problem, and have uninstall Google Desktop due to other problems.

But isnt this the same with iTunes?

Well, if you can do a search and index all of your files, then you don’t need to move your files. That is the only thing I can think of. They must know of this problem and thought of the ramifications.

Gmail - OK
Google Desktop - Ok w/ serious flaw
Google Maps - Good, but nothing outstanding. Yahoo’s map is good too (esp. w/ traffic reports) and I still like MapQuest.

So, with all this, we see Google does not really have a great aresenal of products. Why do they have such a high stock price?

Why in the world do people use this in the first place? Do you REALLY trust Google this much?

Google’s Picasa also does not track pictures when they are moved into different folders, or the folders are renamed.

I don’t know why more people don’t talk about Yahoo! Desktop Search. It’s equally as free and all of the filtering and sorting features make the product far easier to find the files you need when you need them. In my opinion, Google tried to mimic their search on the web but just move it to the desktop.

Google’s search works well on the web because on the web you are only looking for content in one type of file, a rendered web page (and sometimes a pdf file.) Thus, a contextually relevant search result is valid no matter how deeply it is nested on a website, who posted it, or when it was posted.

Your local hard drive(s), on the other hand, has many types of files. Thus, not only is the file content important, so too are the file attributes. Files are nested all over the place, embedded in emails from different people, and are stored, altered, and shared at different times; all of these factors may be relevant to a desktop search.

That’s why I feel like YDS is far superior. It takes all of the file attributes into account and gives the user filtering tools allow them to type relevant keywords and immediately filter out potential results via people, file type, date range, etc. It also updates results on each keystroke, which is a surprisingly helpful feature. The bottom line for me is that it is far faster and easier for me to find what I’m looking for from YDS.

maybe it doesnt matter. in percentage terms, that contributes what 10-20 percent of search capability?

or maybe i am wrong. they will fix it sure, maybe they will use someof the code from the team in google thats writing the OS.

Google is the big company, they’ve got a big audience, they don’t care alone about computer geeks; what they do care about is reaching the masses. The masses don’t have a clue what hierarchical file system is — all they want is to have the necessary file popup in front of them when they demand it. That’s what google delivers to them. And with their audience they can afford to be a little reckless once in a while (and a few times more).

Quote: “It also apparently doesn’t index files by filename. Which is absolute insanity to me. 99% of the time, that’s how I want to find a file, not by the content inside. And when I try typing a filename into google desktop search, it returns nothing. Makes me so sad.”

William…

Many moons ago, I put together a freeware program that did just that. MyFiles Cataloger is still available on my site http://www.missingbytes.net and free for the taking. Give it a go, it does exactly what you’re asking for.

I agree that Google’s interface is simpler and thus may be easier to digest for the mass market. But mass market palatable doesn’t always mean a better product. Also, Yahoo! doesn’t store information about my data or have any visibility into my local hard drive because everything happens clientside.

I just think that the application is worth discussing in the same breath as Google Desktop (even though it isn’t a cool web app) as a viable alternative, especially given what appears to be people’s growing distrust of Google.

Sometimes you just have to look at other than the big names. Copernic Desktop Search finds the most filetypes, by filename or content, low on resources, and you can finetune backgrund tracking - see screen print in my post.

Get an Apple. It has “Spotlight” feature built in and no more need for Google Desktop period.

As non-geek cred as it sounds, MSN Desktop search with it’s Outlook integration is the best I’ve tested for tracking files and email when moved. I move email all over the place, and GDS was atrocious (obviously) at keeping track of where my email messages really resided.

I have downloaded and tried ALL of the desktop search versions, and MSN is the best I’ve tried hands down.

I have noticed this problem for some time. The worst thing is if you use Outlook and move items around in the folders. Half the time it loses track of the email….. Pretty shoddy product if you ask me….

this is why I love spotlight in mac osx tiger

GDS: 1.8 M Simple Interface (if you simply use the floating bar)
CDS: 2.8 M Complicated Interface
YDS: 5.3 M Complicated Interface

GDS caches documents timely. That means it will catch the moved documents in the next round of searching&caching.

Wow, I’m surprised Google hasn’t figured this one out. Had to do this a while ago when I developed for RealPlayer. Windows can take care of this for you with their shortcuts (IPersistFile shell interface). Just serialize the shortcut info, and Windows will always be able to find the file for you.

I noticed this problem couple of weeks back in google desktop search, I switched to msn desktop search engine. It seems to be updating its search index whenever I moved a document to different folder.

i’ve been using MSN desktop search (now called windows desktop search i think) for almost a year and it’s been very good at its job, which is in my case mostly finding old/forgotten emails in outlook. It has definitely saved me a a few hours of search over a year.
As others have mentioned before, i didn’t install google desktop search as for some reason, i don’t trust it enough on the privacy level.

Add TweakGDS, it will allow you to delete and rebuild the index. Also, it can MOVE the index.
http://www.podsync.com/tweakgds.htm

Google Desktop Extreme is also good - better interface, some customization.
http://www.podsync.com/gdx.htm

I am not associated with this software or company, I just like it.

I think this is ridiculous. To make matters worse - if you move around your email in Outlook it “loses” the email!

I know this does not require file-system-level hooks as our backup software product scans and finds all new, updated, deleted, and moved files on every backup!

Its true, all thay hype about google and its high stock price and the recent news of the release of their online spreadsheet… its all useless… besides the core search engine.

Google Desktop is a great concept but you would expect it to work. Out of all the emails it is soposed to index I can’t ever find one after I clean up my inbox.

Google Earth - cool but useless.

Google Maps - Very good, but not intuitive and the stupid markers it generates when you are looking for something are simply just that - stupid.

Google spreadsheet - good to wipe your ass with. No real scientific application.

The google bubble will burst… they don’t have anything that improves productivity or will likelly become a necessity for the workplace of home use.

I do agree. Windows Desktop Search seem to be the best, the faster, the simpler.

“I do not want the content of my hard drive indexed on Google’s servers.”

Maybe you should reconsider commenting on applications you don’t understand.

Apple’s spotlight is obviously the answer to this problem.

Why do people always insist on getting Apple? Macs aren’t compatible with most programs, they’re expensive, and they’re only good at doing design and image/video editing. Sure, the interface is “aqua”, but there’s nothing that a good skin for windows can’t do (some even find the Mac interface cumbersome) There’s no way that people are gonna spent over a thousand dollars just to get a decent desktop search program.