Yahoo! Joins Desktop Search Market

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Yahoo! has become the latest search giant to jump into the desktop search market. It has this morning unveiled its new program which it hopes will allow it compete in the growing war for scanning files on users' home PCs. The release of Yahoo! Desktop Search comes after Google and MSN unveiled similar products.

The new program, currently in beta, has many of the same features as its rivals. However, it's claimed the Yahoo! program searches more than 200 file types and is the most comprehensive of all those released so far. As well as files, it indexes e-mails in Outlook and Outlook Express and it also promises to offer web searches - through its own search engine, of course.

Desktop search seems to be the latest tool the major engines are using in a bid to expand their influence. MSN is also currently running a beta of its new web search tool alongside its desktop search, offered through a browser toolbar. Yahoo's offering appears more like a traditional Windows app - Google's uses the same style as its online search results when it searches through your computer.

View: Yahoo! Desktop Search

View: Google Desktop Search | MSN Toolbar

This is BETA software!, please use caution when installing it on your system

Features:

Hi-performance multithreaded buffered CD-ripping & encoding

Copies "Copy-Protected" CDs

Error Recovery, reads audio from badly scratched CDs

Download and upload disc information from/to the freedb, the Internet Compact Disc Database.

Volume Normalizer and Compressor, Fade In/Out, Silence deletion from the start and end of a song

Reads CD-Text

Output Formats: MP3, Windows Media Audio 8 and 9, Ogg Vorbis, MP4, M4A, AAC, FLAC, VQF, WAV, AIFF, and Monkey's Audio

#1 Apollomus on 11 Jan 2005 - 12:00

yuk

(1 reply) #2 pork-bun on 11 Jan 2005 - 12:09

it seems to be more promising than google search

#2.1 imtoomuch on 11 Jan 2005 - 15:32

I agree. Yahoo's tool will search for 200+ files. That's a lot more than the handful of files that Google's will search for. Yahoo just needs to work on the UI.

#3 AquaDex on 11 Jan 2005 - 12:11

I love the app, as I just love X1 desktop search as Yahoo's Desktop Search is based on it (and free too!), but the problem is I don't like Yahoo Desktop Search's interface, it's too cluttered up, sure they made it looks like Office 2003 but that makes the interface too crowded when compared with X1's.

(1 reply) #4 tohaveunow on 11 Jan 2005 - 14:33

3 betas... Google, Yahoo, and MSN, i wonder will it hurt anything to have all three running on your system at the same time? from the specs, Yahoo seems to be coolest, then Google. what do you guys think?

#4.1 ThePDW on 11 Jan 2005 - 15:30

It will hurt in that the indexing of the desktop search programs takes up quite a bit of HD space. I certainly wouldn't run all of them

#5 Porp on 11 Jan 2005 - 15:36

I will stick to MSN Desktop Search, provides way more features than Yahoo! or Google (crap)

1. MSN Desktop Search
2. X1
3. Yahoo!
4. Google (Really bad job this time Google)

#6 johnorien on 11 Jan 2005 - 16:41

imho copernic desktop search beats all the competition. copernic has been around the searching environment for a long time - and their product isn't beta.

totally free too.

#7 tohaveunow on 11 Jan 2005 - 16:42

Does any of the of the Desktop search programs search Thunderbird 1.0 mail?

#8 plasticparadox on 11 Jan 2005 - 17:00

I've used Google desktop search for a bit.. i find it interesting that so many companies are jumping on this desktop search bandwagon. Is this the new frontier? I don't find it useful at all to have to open a browser window in order to search my computer. In fact, I find it clumsy and overly complicated.

I like the idea of faster search, but something like this should be built into the operating system and shouldn't rely on a webbrowser. It just looks clunky.

#9 Cyranthus on 11 Jan 2005 - 17:11

gag, one more jump on the bandwagon...

(1 reply) #10 hardgiant on 11 Jan 2005 - 22:29

Locate Unix style, all I want, all I need is filename indexing. All that content indexing is really slow.

Thankfully there is a port of Locate for windows.

Avafind is also very good sadly they charge for it.

Locate = 840KB

Yahoo Search = 7.47 megs = bloated

#10.1 munga43 on 12 Jan 2005 - 16:34

So, you got a 10MB harddrive?

If you want bloat, try google desktop. Filled my c: drive (500 MB)..
My vote goes to M$, best design.

#11 JOEWARE on 11 Jan 2005 - 22:52

The GUI looks like MSOffice2003

*sticks w/ Google's*

#12 amitpagarwal on 12 Jan 2005 - 05:06

Why would someone pay for X1 when Yahoo gives all those features for free ?

My First Impression

Yahoo! Desktop Search gains on two points:

1. Support for so many file types - supports searching of source code files like *.c, C#

2. Built in Preview - you can even preview your psd and .ai files without opening up the Adobe apps.

Nice work Yahoo! folks.

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