Google Desktop

desktop search tool

Our Rating: (Very Good)

Google Desktop brings the power of Googles search capabilities to your local computer. The program runs on your PC and maintains an index of your files, documents and even email messages - it supports Outlook, Outlook Express, MS Word, Excel, as well as text files and web surfing history. You can customize the indexing and choose which items to include, and also exclude specific documents or paths. To start searching, you just type your keyword in the browser based interface (runs locally, not on the web), and it returns lightning fast results of all items that match your search. Clicking on any of the search results, will open the file with the default application, or in case of email provide you with a text overview and reply options. The Google Desktop interface is similar to the online Google search, and can optionally be integrated with online search results.

Freeware