I have been working with Google and Copernic Desktop Search, as well as with the beta version of the MSN toolbar. Though, I have not yet used the Yahoo Desktop Search. Anyway. As long as there is a gray area (mostly fuzzy privacy policies), what data is exchanged between my the local machine and the Desktop Search service provider on the other side, I wish to have a custom solution. Beagle [1] seems to be an alternative. It is a Lucene based Open Source Desktop Search implementation originally coded for Gnome. Today I found a Windows implementation written by Fredrik Hedberg [2]. You will hear from me, if Beagle works here on Windows 😉
[1] http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/
[2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/dashboard-hackers/2005-January/msg00045.html
Update – Nat Friedman\’s post on Beagle [3]:
[3] http://www.nat.org/2005/january/#17-January-2005
