Google Desktop Search a promising find

Your humble, music-loving correspondent has been busier than the proverbial one-footed fellow… Your humble, music-loving correspondent has been busier than the proverbial one-footed fellow at the fanny-kicking festival these past few days.

Things started getting crazy just hours after Microsoft Corp. formally launched its rather amazing MSN Music download store that was to be today’s sole topic. But Bill Gates’ newest nemesis, Google Inc., stole MSN’s spotlight with the stunning release of Google Desktop Search.

So I’ll hit the Google high points first and close with the pleasant surprise awaiting music buffs at MSN Music (www.music.msn.com).

After a hurried test on my own file-stuffed hard drive of the beta version of Google’s software, I can tell you that it delivers amazing speed as it uses Google’s famous indexing tricks to search the contents of one’s hard drive. You can get it at www.desktop.google.com.

It delivers even faster than other hard-drive search products, like the $100 X1 (www.x1.com) featured glowingly in this space recently. I was amazed at how it delivered even Boolean searches (coates AND “eat crow”) while using only a tiny amount of the computer’s resources.

The beta software lacks many of X1’s advanced features, such as searching the text of PDF files, but Google certainly bests X1 by not slowing down one’s computer.

Without so much as a blip in speed, Google’s personal search indexes the full text of all e-mail messages in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, as well as all Web pages and Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. It also records the names of every picture, music and movie file on board and archives exchanges using AOL Messenger.

If you’ve ever tried to use the search tools built into Outlook to find a needed old e-mail message, you’ll be enraptured by how quickly Google delivers.

On the downside, there were immediate warnings from privacy advocates that users risk having information about what they have on their hard drives compromised.

Although Google promises that none of the information will be shared without permission, it remains true that the search software will use this information to decide which ads to display in the browser.

Beta software users can set preferences to either share or conceal nonpersonal data and reports of crashes with Google. Knock wood, but my own setup hasn’t crashed while using the Google search.

On the other hand, it can take a matter of days before the initial indexing of a hard drive is completed for the first time, so that shoe has yet to drop during my tests.

As I said above, a flurry of significant surprises swept over the personal technology scene these past few days.

The Macintosh camp was rocked by the unexpected announcement that Apple Computer Inc. has become more of a music store than a computer outfit, as profit from iPod digital tune players has doubled over the past three months.

More than 2 million iPods went out the door, while Apple sold around 836,000 computers.

This rare outbreak of stupendously upbeat news for Apple, of course, put as much of a damper on Microsoft’s MSN Music store’s debut as did Google’s personal hard-drive-search software release.

And that’s before Virgin Records blew away many observers by starting to sell a $249 portable music player that is smaller than an iPod and quite friendly to popular and widely traded MP3 music files.

So now Microsoft’s MSN Music store faces not only the current domination of the song download market by Apple but a challenge by Virgin, the world’s foremost operator of brick-and-mortar music stores.

I was issued a free account for $15 worth of 99-cent downloads to test MSN Music, and I’ve never had a more fruitful and enjoyable music-shopping trip, online or offline.

A lot of my delight stems from the way MSN Music integrates itself with Windows XP and Microsoft Media Player 9 to deliver high-fidelity recordings in extremely small Windows WMA files.

They are copy-protected like Fort Knox is burglar-protected, but as long as you stick inside the Windows cocoon, they deliver an experience much like Apple’s own piracy-protected AAC files designed for iPods.

MSN Music’s screen display rivals Apple’s elegant iTunes store and MusicMatch’s delightfully simple interface. Advertising is muted and kept to the side of the screen, and song names are presented as simple lines of text.

This displays large numbers of tunes per screen, and the 30-second samples play quickly. Bought songs download quickly as well, and it all works to make shopping delightfully free of the Web hassles that so many of Microsoft’s other offerings create.

I don’t give stars in my reviews, but if I did, Microsoft’s MSN Music would get just as many as Apple’s iTunes. And that’s a lot of stars.

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(Binary beat readers can participate in the column at www.chicagotribune.com/askjim, or e-mail jcoates1@aol.com. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.)

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