Well, it took a while, but Google has finally released their desktop search program Google Desktop for Linux. While this sounds like great news, I get the feeling that Google might be in the wrong market with this product. Don’t get me wrong: I love that Google is no longer ignoring Linux. I love that they have native versions of Google Earth and Google Desktop. But I just don’t think that Google Desktop fits in well with the Linux crowd.
I see at least a few problems with Google Desktop for Linux:
- It’s not open source. Everything doesn’t need to be, of course. But there are enough good open-source alternatives (metatracker, recoll, even that piece of crap beagle) that do the same thing at least as effectively.
- Google has an image problem that isn’t getting any better. The former “do-no-evil” folks are doing a lot of things that seem evil lately, including taking pictures of people on the street for Street View and trying to snatch up Doubleclick. I wrote a lot about this in a recent entry on my blog (http://apt-get.us).
- The installation and interface are tied to having an active ‘net connection. Will this run when a user is offline? And what kind of data is being transferred back to Google?
There are a couple of positives, though:
- Google Desktop is a relatively tight piece of code. It’s memory footprint is about 75% smaller than beagle’s bloat, for example. And even though the initial indexing takes forever, it doesn’t impact system performance (as opposed to beagle, which brings system performance to a crawl).
- Google Desktop integrates with Google’s web search and GMail. For those who keep their email on Gmail, this can be a lifesaver. And it does save a step for those who realize, “hey, I should search for this on the web, too!”
As for me, I’m sticking with recoll. All of my email is stored (and backed up) on my computers. ALT+TAB over to Firefox is no skin off my nose. And I don’t know that I trust Google anymore. So I’m staying away.
I think that a lot of people will, too. Maybe Google is looking to corner the market on Windows users switching to Linux because of Vista/Dell’s new Ubuntu machines?
