Google Desktop for Mac

Google has released a beta of Google Desktop for the Mac. Google's Mac Blog provides some details about the release from Mike Pinkerton.

Google Desktop is a software download that brings Google's search engine to your Mac.

You have lots of information on your computer, and you see a lot more on the web. With Google Desktop, you can quickly and easily find all this stuff right when you need it, including your files, emails, and web pages you've seen.

Pinkerton explains that they took time with the project to deeply integrate it into Mac OS X and to maintain a high standard of usability. Their other goals were to make the desktop search fast and easy to use.

Arstechnica posts a first look at the software and describes it as "somewhat slim" compared to the Windows version. However, they expect continuous updates:

The Google team says that it plans to eventually bring all Google Desktop features to the Mac, which they estimate to happen sometime within the next six months. "Now that we have a strong Mac team on Google Desktops, we have the scale to do updates on a much more regular basis," said Pichai. "From now on, there will not be such large gaps between revisions."

Ars describes Google Desktop as "significantly faster" than Apple's own Spotlight and also can integrate GMail and Google Search history content in your searches.