RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

Google Desktop has become an Enterprise application with the release of Google Desktop for Enterprise
(I know this news isn’t exactly new, but I have started looking at this application only now)

The application can be downloaded from here. The main differences from the consumer grade version seem to be that it can be installed via Windows Active Directory group policy.
In fact full support for group policies is added allowing all end-user settings to be centrally controlled. A Windows MSI-based installer is added as a download file, so that IT administrators can push out the application to all or selected employees.

Even though the content of the desktop search engine cache has been restricted to the machines user (with correct user/pass), I don’t think this goes far enough.

Product manager, Matt Glotzbach said, ” that a common concern was that, with all data on a machine consolidated in the Google Desktop Search index, a malicious user could remove the files and restore them, recreating the contents of the machine. With the new system, only those in possession of the machine’s user name and password can access the data.”

It doesn’t much to get that kind of information.

I don’t like the idea of indexing network drives, and then giving it a nice web interface.

One good note, is that access to the Desktop web interface port (4664) is locked down to just the loopback address (127.0.0.1). This port will then not be accessible via web interface from anywhere else.

With regards information being shared with Google, mainly it seems to be “a unique install number” ( When you install Google Desktop, this number and a message indicating whether the installation succeeded are sent back to Google), and also information fro the advanced features.

When you enable advanced features the application “may send information about the websites that you visit to provide enhanced Google Desktop functions, such as personalizing news displayed in Sidebar”. Hmm, I don’t want that going to Google.

Enabling Advanced Features “also allows Google Desktop to collect a limited amount of non-personal information from your computer and send it to Google. This includes summary information, such as the number of searches you do and the time it takes for you to see your results, and application reports we’ll use to make the program better”. Again, thats not information I want Google to see.

One thing I don’t like is that to get a list of these “advanced” features takes a little work. They are listed here

These features are mainly related to the searching the content or mail headers of an e-mail (which can be indexed from either Outlook, or from Lotus Notes). These features include searching operators such as:

* Subject:
* To:
* From:
* Cc:
* Bcc:
    * Phrase search*
* “-” search

They should have added these features in the “basic” features, instead of making people send information to Google, in return for these pretty basic features.

I think our jury is out at the moment on a decision. I would be interested in knowing if anyone else is using this appliaction in a company environment. I have sent a mail to the Open mailing list, but no replies just yet.

And of course, always, it’ll probably be in eternal beta
It was mentioned at various news sites including this, this, and this.