A new experimental Google app for Windows
68 comments
·September 16, 20251970-01-01
Wasn't this done (20!) years ago? It seems very familiar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop#Results_list:_t...
paxys
Google Desktop was mainly for local file search. Shame that the idea never really took off, and even today local search is hopelessly broken on both Windows and Mac.
1970-01-01
It did take off. There were server pizza boxes and everything. It was killed in 2011 by the very same company that is now introducing it as a "new app" in 2025.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/283722910233
https://web.archive.org/web/20060112110931/https://desktop.g...
The dead Internet theory continues to prevail. What is old is new again because nothing new can be created. The Hollywood reboots formula works, so we continue it with technology reboots.
paxys
Those boxes were for enterprises, not for you to plug into your laptop.
stronglikedan
For Windows, Powertoys Run is great, but nothing beats Voidtools Everything for file search. It's an amazing piece of software that has retained the number one spot on Google search for the single term "everything" for an amazingly long time.
mhuffman
>local search is hopelessly broken on both Windows and Mac.
Not to derail this Windows thread, but is there anything that works remotely well on Mac? The built-in options are ... lacking
y-curious
I find the file search annoying on Mac because it doesn't search the drive I'm in on finder (skill issue? Please tell me if that's configurable)
I find cmd+space to be 10000000x better than windows for applications though
rs186
If memory serves me right, it could look for information in Word documents and instant messaging apps extremely quickly and then display results in a great UI similar to google.com. Nothing before or after ever matched its capability. A real shame the product was killed. I guess there was no money to be made there.
Fool me once, ...
saratogacx
It was a time when federated and unified views were considered the optimal user experience and there were many flavors of the concept at the time (msft had search providers that would let you service any kind of result in windows or sharepoint search). However, 'brand awareness' started to take over. Nobody wanted to be just a provide to an obviously google-ish experience because it makes them easier to replace.
Like with messaging apps, everything fractioned to fall to a zero sum game of exclusive 'experiences'.
breadwinner
With anything Google you have to worry about privacy. Where is the privacy policy? Does it associate information it finds on your PC to your Google identity?
sigmar
Bet they're anticipating that at some point in the future they might want gemini to interface with your PC (ala Claude's "computer use" and openai's "operator")
nine_k
Press Alt+Space to activate? Nobody activate window menus from keyboard any more?
saelthavron
Many people don't know how to cut and paste via the keyboard. The vast majority aren't even aware of Alt+Space. The only reason I use Alt+Space is to recover windows from off-screen areas.
dragonwriter
Since the window menu actions that aren’t terrible with keyboard also have their own direct keyboard shortcuts (move and size are the ones that don’t, but hand positioning windows instead of using snap positions is tedious with keyboard), I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a fairly rare thing.
chrismorgan
I was thinking about Maximise, Restore, and Minimise, which I think were Alt+Space {X,R?,N} (haven’t used Windows for a few years), but I suppose Win+Up is now Maximise, and Win+Down Restore and Minimise—but you still need Alt+Space N to minimise from maximised.
EvanAnderson
I do, every day. It's part of my muscle memory to maximize windows.
xnx
It's a little annoying that this Google app steals the alt+space shortcut, but you can remap it.
xnx
You can also activate by clicking the "G" system tray icon.
omeromr
I remapped it to Scroll Lock.
DashAnimal
Ok gave this a try. Actually pretty handy. I wish I didn't clean up my Windows PC so I could compare indexing of files, but it did a good job of finding most things but the things I searched for Windows was able to find too. But its nice to have an easy shortcut to Google search and also having Google Lens on my PC to translate text, ask questions about a screenshot etc. I love this feature on my android.
The UI is a little annoying at times. Some apps receive the alt+space key so it doesn't always behave like you expect.
Checking Task Manager it used about 43MB of memory whether running as a background process or in the foreground, showing search results.
herf
"Try it for yourself by opting into the experiment in Labs."
This is a really confusing call to action.
stronglikedan
Given the context, it seems unambiguous to me.
nwhnwh
"to help you find what you need, faster" yeah, I know you care about me, google.
hu3
it's hard to compete with other launchers like:
- Microsoft PowerToys Run https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
- Keypirinha https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha
- Flow Launcher https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher
If they can index google photos and gmail too then I might try.
blibble
no doubt chrome will automatically install it at some point
frfl
If you have the top market position already in browsers and search, pretty easy to get people onto a product like this regardless of whether better alternatives exist.
balls187
Isn't that how MS and Google lost anti-trust cases?
frfl
MS got hit kinda hard back in the 2000s right?
But since then most cases have been nothing more than slaps on the wrist? Have any major companies faced dire consequences for their anticompetitive practice.
So why would they stop using their market position in ways that benefit them and at worst result in minor fines or wrist slaps?
amluto
Are you sure they lost? If the CEOs had perfect crystal balls and knew that those particular business practices would result in the penalties that they got in their court cases, I bet they still would have done the same things.
stronglikedan
Those have traditionally been for "power" users. Google is targeting "average" users with this, I believe. And if so, I also believe this will have more installs than any (all?) of those within a year.
staindk
Raycast is also coming to Windows at some point - https://www.raycast.com/windows
TheRoque
On KDE plasma, there's KRunner (Alt + Space default), also pretty neat.
caminanteblanco
Finally a competitor to spotlight search on Mac
lxgr
I believe Raycast (which I like a lot on macOS) also has an upcoming Windows version.
jaybna
Google Toolbar is back, baby!
jaybna
Looks like they forgot to scrub an old confirmation page too - I can still join Google+! https://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/done.html
lentil_soup
Highly recommend Everything instead. It's so freaking fast, can search by keywords, can sort by time change to see what files are being touched in real time, can search any "cloud" file if you have them locally ... And no ads!
bitpush
Does it have Gemini?
Please consider making the UI respect the user's custom text scaling settings for accessibility. I'm not referring to DPI scaling but the TextScaleFactor value at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Accessibility (see [1][2]) that users can set in Ease of Access > Display > Make text bigger.
(Failing that, adding basic support for scaling text or UI via ctrl+plus/minus would be a huge improvement!)
With the exception of Chromium/Chrome [3] this's been a persistent issue with Windows desktop apps from Google (most of these also use hard-coded control sizes making the problem worse).
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/input/...
[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.ui.viewman...
[3] https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40586200