The ultimate, and
exceptionally rare, compliment for any company is to invent a product that becomes so dominant in its field that the brand name works its way into everyday language.
\u201cMake a Xerox of it\u201d is a tip of the hat to the photocopier pioneer. The British still \u201cHoover the carpets\u201d before guests arrive. And saying something is \u201cthe Cadillac\u201d of its line is a nod to the first high-quality, mass-produced automobile.
The Internet world now has an offering of its own: when looking for information on the Web, you \u201cGoogle it.\u201d
California-based Google Inc. <\/b> (www.google.com<\/i>) has both avoided the crash-and-burn fate of many of its search-engine predecessors and mopped the floor with its current roster of heavyweight competitors in an incredibly short period.
Google\u2019s lightning-fast success is due to two tried-and-true business principals: the company built a better mousetrap; and, instead of resting on its laurels, it pumps big bucks into research and development. The heavy spending both furthers its lead as the search engine to beat and creates a broad array of addictive spinoff products that keep people coming back.
Google Labs (http:\/\/labs.google.com<\/i>), an in-house think-tank that is home to some of the brightest computer geeks alive, continually rolls out finished products and test (beta) versions of state-of-the-art gadgets and gizmos to make the Internet easier for all of us to navigate. Average Internet users then use the beta versions, find errors and glitches or recommend improvements, and Google goes back to the drawing board for the next version. The adventurous Web surfer, in effect, becomes one of the lab\u2019s guinea pigs.
Google Desktop is a prime example of a work in progress.
The concept is simple enough: the most popular Internet search-engine company wants to make it easy for you to search your personal computer for your own files.
After all, the rapid advance of high technology in a very short period means that even the most old-fashioned of financial professionals may find themselves with work and home computers that are crammed with personal files and data that can be hard to locate.
Google Desktop 4, free software released in June that can be downloaded at http:\/\/desktop.google.com<\/i>, is a program that burrows into your computer and then quietly creates an archive of your files, e-mails, photos and even videos and music \u2014 making it quite fast for you to search your own computer for something specific.
It can index all manner of items: Excel, PowerPoint or Word documents, PDF and Adobe files, bookmarked Web sites, MP3 and WAV multimedia, MPG and AVI videos and even old e-mails.
It also comes with a \u201csidebar\u201d that tracks the Internet for topics you viewed or have a history of seeking out.
The combination can be a real time saver. If you can\u2019t recall where you read about a specific event, for example, just do a basic search and the Desktop 4 will indicate whether it was an
e-mail, Web site or one of your own documents.
The program works only with Windows XP or Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3.
Some important caveats are in order, however. It is called Desktop 4 because it follows three \u2018beta\u2019 versions of earlier programs released by Google Labs. While it keeps getting better, some glitches still remain.
One main problem faced by Google \u2014 and all other high-tech firms working on desktop computer searches \u2014 deals with security and privacy.
This is the quandary: if you let an \u201coutside\u201d company into your computer for some help, then who is to say the data it is organizing isn\u2019t open to being read by the company \u2014 or any number of third parties or hackers?
Google Desktop 4 steers around many potential problems by letting you decide what it can index. Password-protected data and Web sites, for example, can be kept out of the program. You can also edit the index at will, removing any sensitive files now and in future.
The initial indexing of all files that you want on Desktop 4 can take hours, particularly if you have a computer that is loaded with reams of data. Fortunately, however, the Google program will do its librarian chores only when you are not working. Simply leave the computer running overnight or if you are heading out for a few hours. After the initial indexing, files added to your computer in the future will be indexed automatically and quickly.
@page_break@Google notes that the Desktop 4 program running on a single computer does not store any of your data with the company; the data remain in place.
The program does, however, offer a \u201csearch across computers\u201d option that will, for instance, let you index files among your home, work and laptop computers.
If you choose that option, then your files will be sent to Google servers while they are being copied to your other computers. (You may need the permission of your company and its information-technology staff to run such a program on your computer at work.)
Privacy is, and will continue to be, a key issue on the Internet for many years, and Google has gone to great lengths to tell everyone it simply helps without peeking. Microsoft Corp. and other big players have been dealing with the same security issues for more than a decade.
Still, some concerns remain. Google itself recently had a very embarrassing security breach, when one of its own \u201cofficial blogs\u201d was hacked and rewritten.
Any practical person should realize, however, that all extremely valuable documents are potential candidates for theft or spying, whether they are on a computer or locked away in a safe. It\u2019s doubtful that you have ultra-secret data that would attract the interest of a world-class spy or villain. If you\u2019re a typical computer user, then Google Desktop 4 may well prove to be a very safe time saver for you. \tIE<\/b>
If you have Web sites to share with IE readers, e-mail Glenn Flanagan at gflanagan@sympatico.ca. <\/i>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The search-engine giant has been working for years to put a librarian into your computer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3013,3018],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328955"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=328955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}