Review: Google Desktop
I visit so many websites, blogs, and news portals on a daily basis that a large portion of my online time is spent on that. I’ve always wanted to figure out a way of organizing myself. For some reason, I am not a big fan of RSS readers. Nothing else seemed to work for me. Then I saw this seemingly nifty app by Google and decided to give it a try.
Google Desktop tries to organize your internet lifestyle. It keeps track of your frequently visited websites and presents you the related information in an organized fashion. It also detects any RSS feeds of the websites that you visit and automatically subscribe to them. The little (or maybe not so little) sidebar is the place where you can sneak-peak at the information. So instead of going to every website you have all the information at once place. Interesting concept, but does it really work?
After installing and using Google Desktop for few days, I found myself even more confused with all the information overflow. It subscribed me to news feeds that I wasn’t interested at all. Sure I can edit what I am interested in, but I am also very busy and I don’t have enough time tinkering with some new application. So I ended up getting news alerts for something happening in a remote village in Alabama. It also made my computer too slow. Whenever I open more than 3 applications and I have Google Desktop running, my computer starts asking for mercy. As a result, I have to shut down Google Desktop.
I think Google Desktop is not a very bad application, it just needs to mature a lot. It should only monitor my browsing habits for a week or 10 days and then come up with related contents, instead of making assumptions. If I frequent slashdot, that does not mean I am only interested in IT news, or if I go to CNN.com you can alert me for every little thing happening around the world. I think My Yahoo works much better as every single item over there is customizable but it is a web-based application.
So, the bottom line, Google Desktop seems to have too many bells and whistles which makes it a bit slow, and it does not help organizing the web. So it belongs to the great pool of uninstalled applications on my computer.