Apparently, the Google Desktop search tool is so good, some people are now saying it's a big privacy/security risk. It goes through your Outlook/Outlook Express emals, your Word/Excel/PowerPoint files, your IE cached pages, and plaintext files, and builds a giant search index on your hard disk. You access Google Desktop the same way you would the regular Google - via a web browser. Just enter a search string and up comes the results.
I was amazed the first time I saw it in action. It was able to dig up information from emails years past, and from text files and webpages I've deleted already, but still existing in the cache. Works great as a secondary memory aside from my brain.
Going back to the privacy risk part. If this application gets installed in Internet cafes or Web kiosks, it will start caching the websites you've been to, the emails you've read, etc. The next user can simply type in "password" or "gmail.com" and start going through your personal stuff. So the next time you use a public terminal, make sure you disable Google Desktop Search, if it's running, and remember to clear all caches once you're done.
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