Once installed in a computer running Windows XP or Windows 2000 (with Service Pack 3 or higher), the Google Desktop Search (GDS) can find whatever's done on that machine- including e-mail sent or received via Outlook or Outlook Express, AOL instant messaging, Microsoft Office files, and web visits.

It will even retrieve e-mail you've removed from your Deleted Items folder and documents that were in your Waste Basket after it is emptied.

It's an amazing product that is far better than any search desktop search tool currently available; faster and easier to use. Some who've used it say it is "light years" ahead of the Windows or Outlook search tools.

Here's what's worrying some privacy and security experts:

Google Desktop Search gives your computer a photographic memory. When GDS finds something in its searchable index; it retrieves the actual cached document. "It won't just give you an idea, it will actually show you the physical pages and things that you've done," explains Pam Dixon, Executive Director of the World Privacy Forum.

Dixon describes Google's new product as "legal spyware" that can be dangerous because it makes searching a computer's hard drive so easy. "Say you go shopping online," Dixon says, "it will collect your credit card numbers. If you do banking online, it will collect your passwords and online baking financial information."

Google insists its new application will not create privacy problems, because it can be set up not to index certain domains or secure web pages. But, as privacy experts point out, that would require a user to change the default setting.

In a recent article "Does Google Desktop Search Pose Risks?" PCWorld magazine writer Tom Spring says that what's alarming to many is that fact that this program "can resurrect Web pages that were not meant to be viewed again, including online banking and brokerage transactions, as well as web-based e-mail received and sent on the computer by previous users."

The Beta version of Google Desktop Search, now available for free downloading, is not password protected (something the company says it is working on).

"So, if you install it, anyone with physical access to your PC has easy access to what you've done on that machine," warns the World Privacy Forum's Pam Dixon.

GDS is designed for single-use computers. In fact, on a shared computer, this beta version can only installed and accessed by the administrator of that machine. But, it will track and save whatever is done on that machine, even the private files and web visits of other users.

And consider this-- use a computer that has Google Desktop Search installed, say you want to check your e-mail from a friend's house, and they can see everything you did on that computer in complete detail.

Since this search engine runs in the background, it's not always easy to know that it is installed and running on that computer, especially if you don't know that the icon in the Windows system tray that looks like the swirls on a kid's lollipop is the icon for GDS. (See image to the right).

By the way, Google is the first, but not the only company moving from web to desktop searches. Dixon says AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves are working on similar programs.

For More Information:

www.usatoday.com

www.msnbc.msn.com

story.news.yahoo.com

www.eweek.com