Desktop Search: The Game Is Afoot

Just a few months ago, Windows users who needed some thing better than
Microsoft's clunky search feature to locate e-mail messages or files on their
computer had to seek out -and usually pay for-third-party software. Now,
Microsoft Corp. has joined Google in providing a free desktop search tool, Yahoo
has announced plans to do the same, and more are on the way.

On December 13, a test version of Microsoft's entry arrived as part of a
new MSN Toolbar. This is a critical step in the evolution of local search
because the odds are good that the technology will eventually be built into
Internet Explorer, perhaps into Windows itself. Yahoo will make a version of X1,
an excellent stand-alone search application, available free of charge in
January.

For anyone frustrated by the difficulty of finding something among thousands
of e-mail messages and files stashed on a typical business or consumer PC, this
sudden proliferation of desktop search may end up creating difficult choices.
Each of the search programs has its strengths, and it would be a good thing if
you could just pick the one that's best for a given job - the way you might
use multiple browsers or e-mail programs. Unfortunately, you can't safely run
more than one desktop search program on your computer. These programs, which
index the contents of your hard drive, can interfere with one another, meaning
none of them will work properly.

The
Microsoft offering is part of a new MSN Toolbar including desktop search, Web
search, and a pop-up blocker (which duplicates that feature in the latest
version of Internet Explorer). There's also a tool that stores personal
information, including credit card numbers, and inserts it automatically in the
appropriate fields in Web forms.

The desktop search itself appears in its own window. It offers options for
restricting search to mail, various kinds of documents, music, or pictures. This
is a powerful tool, but it comes with a confusing user interface. For example,
you have to know that clicking on the "Images" menu item above the box
where you enter search terms tells the program to look for pictures on the Web.
Like Google Desktop, MSN lists document titles (or e-mail information such as
subject and sender) and a snippet of the body text.

Not surprisingly, MSN Desktop is especially efficient at searching Microsoft
Outlook and Outlook Express folders, finding calendar items and contacts as well
as messages. Unlike Google, it does not search copies of Web pages stored on
your computer, so it does not find messages from Web services such as Hotmail.
Although MSN Search claims to examine spreadsheet contents, it was unable to
locate text in an Excel file that Google found without trouble. Neither MSN nor
Google currently can search the contents of Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files.

While both these programs can be useful, I would give up either for X1, which
I have come to depend on since writing about it last spring. I use it mainly to
search e-mail, and I especially like the way it can cram information on two or
three dozen messages into a window. The new version to be supplied by Yahoo
features improved performance and a cleaner design. And free sure beats the
current $75 price. The choice of a desktop search product really depends on how
you plan to use it. It's just a shame you can't run them all.

in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2005 by The McGrraw-Hill Companies,Inc