Monday, October 18, 2004

Google Desktop Search

This is something new that I tired out the other day, it takes a while to get the data indexed but it works quite well.

http://desktop.google.com

The application is great but there are a few things that I dont like about it.
1. I dont like the idea that it is a web based search and it creates a server on your local machine http://127.0.0.1:4664, Is'nt that some kind of security hole?, I can like connect to any machine on the internet that has google desktop runing and searhcing data in their local machine. I am quite sure that it is not possible but I dont mind actually testing that.

2. Web based interface - It is like a desktop seaching Engg but it has a web based interface, I am not too fussed about this but then too I feel it is kinda diff. It would be great if they has integrated it with Google Deskbar, actually there is not much of intergration it is as easy as adding a new Customized Search on Google Deskbar.

3. What I really hate about the application is the fact that it creates really huge Index files in my home dir (i.e C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxxx\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Desktop Search') I am not bothered by the size of the index file but I cannot configure Google Desktop Search to move the files to a different location. Since I have just allocated 4Gb for my C partition, and this partition does only contain the OS and a few programs that refuse to instally anywhere else, but as of now I dont have more than 700MB left. This is actually my fault since I should have allocated at least 15GB for the Windows partitions.

I was just having a search around for google desktop and I found some really interesting stuff, like this guys site : http://www.kayodeok.co.uk/weblog/200410/14/google_desktop_search.html

This person mentions something about looking the reg for changing the google data file, so I had a search through the reg and here is what I came up with.
I guess I just have to change the value for the key : data_dir and it should be fine (hopefully)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop]
"install_dir"="C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Google Desktop Search\\"
"data_dir"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\xxxxxxx\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Google\\Google Desktop Search"
"timestamp"=dword:4163573d
"system_active"=dword:00000001
...

No comments: