Google Desktop Search
I am not so fond of the idea behind GDS (not that it really matters since I don’t meet the systems requirements): a thingy that crawls through personal files (“email, files, and web pages”) and indexes them, that is not quite my cup of tea. More generally speaking, any database built to index my files makes me feel itchy (such as WinFS), even if it is stored locally: who knows what happens if this database is compromised, if Google is taken over by evil aliens willing to snoop into our files to steal my grandmother’s recipes, if malicious data is inserted in the index, if, if… It is a matter of trust and I tend to think that there lots of naughty people out there – even though I still wonder what they would do with the junk that litters my hard drive. Sorry, grandma.
I am pretty sure that it does a better job than the dog (what wouldn’t? I look for files through Cygwin, at work. It does the job faster and doesn’t bark). Anyway, Bruce Schneier has written this very interesting eWeeks article about how the use of GDS uncovers security holes. But those vulnerabilities exist, with or without GDS; using GDS is just more likely to introduce more security risks. I am not saying GDS is not secure, though, since I don’t have a clue; however, there is always that (slight?) possibility that it might not…
