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Microsoft Releases Desktop Search

As reported by Slashdot and everybody else, Microsoft released a desktop search product today called the MSN Toolbar Suite (and it ain’t a 21st century Web tool without the) Beta:

This brings true desktop search to Windows (for those who don’t have Google Desktop Search or similar software running already) and also includes features like search term highlighting in web pages, auto-completing of forms, and a pop-up blocker.

Forgive me for being underwhelmed, but maybe this should have been in the frickin’ operating system years ago, eh?

I’ve come to rely on Google Desktop Search for one thing: searching my largish email archive. I only do this because it’s several several magnitudes better and faster than the sloth-like search in Outlook. I’d try out this tool, except that it integrates with Internet Explorer, and we’re clear on how I feel about that shoddy browser. First MSN Spaces in response to Google buying Blogger, then desktop search…can MSN Search Suggest and acquiring Flickr be far behind?

Here’s a thorough examination of MSN’s offering.

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Darren Barefoot is an author, speaker and digital strategist. He’s the co-founder of Capulet Communications, and co-author of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

9 comments

  2. Hi Darren,

    Actually, I’m using it with 100% Firefox. It’s got a toolbar you can add to your taskbar (like the QuickLaunch group) that will pull up results in whatever your default browser is.

    And that’s only if you choose to go to the web — most of it you can do right in its own window (which, amazingly, doesn’t seem to be built with the IE codebase).

    I’m using CTRL-SHIFT-F as my shortcut key, then as you start to type it fills in the blank. I never see IE.

  3. Come on, guys. Google Desktop Search hasn’t been out long enough for Microsoft to have jumped on any bandwagon. (And AOL, Apple, and Yahoo haven’t released a thing yet) I don’t see a leader in this pack yet.

    If you think we actually turned this thing around since the launch of Google Desktop Search that is more praise than we probably deserve. Nevertheless, I was using a prototype of the technology that eventually became the Toolbar Suite about a year ago – before any of this recent press. Ah well.

  4. actually if you gave it a go you’d see it’s much better then Google Desktop Search… I was rather disappointed with GDS when it came out.. but I’m pleasently surprised with MS Toolbar Suite..

  5. Well not like Google’s all the trouble free… it never DID work on my computer. Kept saying it’s not compatible with these X-Y-Z applications and why dont u uninstall these and try again.. well those apps were my firewall and anti virus.

    MSN Toolbar works on my computer. I use it. It does the job. Should it already be a part of the OS.. i dont know, did YOU know back then?

    Next year when someone comes up with the ultra cool tool which solves the humanity’s OS problems.. should that tool be already THERE is the OS.. things evolve. Get over the “it should already be there” phase.

  6. Actually, strictly speaking we don’t integrate with IE… we integrate with the Windows shell in order to expose the rich functionality of manipulating results such as drag and drop or multi-select or right-clicking and getting an appropriate context menu.

    The end result.. we’re not a web page and that’s why Mozilla can’t display MSN desktop results. Consider the view you get much more akin to the view you get in the shell when you type in c:\ in the address bar than when you type in a URL and get IE.

    David Dawson [MSN]

  7. Thanks for the tips on non-IE compatibility. For the MSN marketing machine, I assumed it was IE-specific because the demo seems to suggest that and it offers pop-up blocking as a feature.

    Saad: Let’s be clear–this thing isn’t a revolutionary new feature–it’s (apparently) a decent search tool for your OS. So, yes, I think we could have expected this (and pop-up blocking) a few years ago.

  9. David: Regarding the fact that this is NOT a webpage and part of windows.. well it may be how it’s implemented, but NOT how it looks.

    I’m an interaction designer, so in my opinion, you’re using a web page paradigm, this hardly looks like an App. It’s totally diffrerent from the old search feature. So expect the user to look at it as a web page. And if they choose to view it in their “default” browser, let them. Not like firefox cant diplay it. Suppose I search for something on my hard disk, and it has a weblink, should I copy the link from IE to Firefox? Similarly, Messenger opens my links in IE. There are a million things, this could go on foreever. 🙂

    When you have a unified (hard disk+web) search, have a unified viewing solution. Crashing one window of explorer takes out the rest and even the desktop.

    Darren: I agree it’s no great breakthrough, but things happen one at a time right? Intel doesnt release new processors with a gap of 2GHz.. they increment at incredibly small numbers. And this amount of work wasnt really there in search technology when XP came out.. at least it wasnt in the market. So i guess it’s improving bit by bit.

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