Google just announced that it will be discontinuing Google Desktop, along with all the associated APIs, services, plugins, gadgets and support, on Sept. 14. (Curiously, it's still available for download at desktop.google.com. Go ahead, folks... enjoy it for the next 11 days.)
Never mind that the G Desktop cache has saved my sorry, delete-happy butt innumerable times over the years. Never mind that G Desktop works infinitely better than the Windoze alternative. Google's explanation is that:
In the last few years, there’s been a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as the integration of search and gadget functionality into most modern operating systems. People now have instant access to their data, whether online or offline.
So, I'm open to all suggestions on how to save the G Desktop archive I have now and migrate it to something new.
And no thanks, Google. I'm not just going to just move my laptop contents to the cloud.
I have Copernic Desktop Search indexing my hard drive as I type...
Posted by: Mary Ellen Bates | January 31, 2012 at 01:18 PM
I didn't discover the the plug was pulled until yesterday when I used Chrome to search and it came back with an error message with my IP address. Now what.
Posted by: Nancy | January 31, 2012 at 11:05 AM
I'm about to give DocFetcher a try. I'm drawn to it first because it uses Lucene. It does not do everything Google Desktop did; but then, for me, GD was over-featured anyway, so this one might be enough for me. You can check it out at http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html
Posted by: T. R. Halvorson | January 07, 2012 at 07:30 AM
The old Ask Jeeves Desktop Search was even better than Google's but I think people were very slow to discover and adopt these. If Ask.com came back with desktop search ( or anyone else with a decent UI) I would even consider paying for it.
Posted by: Tiffsterr | September 12, 2011 at 04:45 PM
Oh No!! I can't believe it!! - Yes I'm one of the many Google Desktop users who have been saved many, many, many times with this nifty tool. Our organisation will eventually move to a cloud based system but what to do in the meantime?!
Posted by: Erica Turner | September 04, 2011 at 07:55 PM