Finally our long-held dream comes true -- now start to search your own computer with Google's quietly launched Goole Desktop Search beta. Having achieved great success on the Internet and marketplace, Google has set off to encroach our local files now. Will this bother Microsoft for Desktop Search might be threatening to Windows' built-in search feature? No doubt the new pace will arouse a new round of debates on Google's privacy issue, with which the public has expressed tremendous concerns since the introduction of Gmail.

So far the file types Google Desktop Search beta can work with are limited to:

Web pages previously seen in Internet Explorer [ bad news for Firefox supporters ];

Emails sent or received via Outlook or Outlook Express [ sad news for Eudora users ];

IM chat logs with AOL Instant Messenger [ don't be upset if you use MSN messenger. Desktop Search works perfectly with chat logs created by MSN messenger ];

Files in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint as well as plain text [ so Microsoft feels a bit better now huh? ].

Support for more file types will be improved in the coming version. Tell Google what you want more, what problems you run into or just send a big THANKS!

The Desktop Search will scan files on the computer, build an index for all the files it skims over and creat a cache for all the files you open [make sure you have more than 500 MB free space on your hardisk]. The indexing job will be conducted whenever the computer is idle, which means when you are working on your computer, you won't be annoyed by the noise usually heard when antivirus software scans your hardisk. The trade-off is that in the first begining this program won't work as well as it is expected to be -- it takes time to set up index for files and you will see the power gradually.

I found the text search in Microsoft Office files are gorgeous. The in-text searching feature was not originally created by Google but obviously Google is the one who intergrates the feature into simplicity and efficiency. I once was astonished by the magic of "velocity search" which will be built in Apple's tiger, but now I don't want MAC Os X badly coz I can do that on PC too! Oh another thing to mention, there is no MAC version for Desktop Search yet.