(August 22 2005) Google has launched version 2 of its desktop search program. For those of you that still haven’t acquired one of these nifty tools, a desktop search program is a piece of software that lets you search your own hard drive, your emails and the web from the same search form.

“Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information - even without searching,” says Marissa Mayer, director of product management for consumer products at Google. “You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in.”

The new version has a desktop “sidebar” — a small vertical window on the side of the screen — that gives Windows-users direct access to email, news, weather, photos, stocks and RSS and Atom news feeds.

Like Apple’s Spotlight Google Desktop Search now enables users to get search results before they have finished typing. If there are applications in the preliminary search results, they can launch it by clicking on the listing.

Google has also added a Outlook Toolbar which enables Microsoft Outlook users to search all of their Outlook email directly from a search box embedded in Outlook itself.

The best part of the new version, however, is that it lets GMail users search the content of their GMail email account, and even if they are not connected to the Internet.

See Google Desktop Search for more information.
See also Pandia’s review of selected desktop search applications.
Search Engine Watch has more: Google Desktop Search 2 Offers New Sidebar Widgets, Outlook Integration & More