Just stamp “Belongs to Google” on my forehead and get it over with.

One of these days they’re going to realize that the company whose motto is “be less evil” is the devil incarnate. But until then, I will continue to be amazed at how often they hit it out of the park.

I have been looking for a reason to dump [X1](http://www.x1.com) as my primary search engine on the PC for a while now. X1 is powerful and it’s fast, but the interface is not so great. I tried the first version of [Google Desktop Search](http://desktop.google.com) and while it had a lot going for it, I found it too limited. Version 2 is out, and wow…what an improvement.

The sidebar is a bit of a rip off of [Desktop Sidebar](http://www.desktopsidebar.com) but with less overhead and Google’s polish. When the panels update it’s incredibly smooth. And hello?!? The search is remarkably like [Spotlight!](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/) And just as fast. Look familiar?

However, the feature that made me bow at the Big G was the option to add a networked drive to the indexing. I have some files on the Mac, some on the PC. I try to be consistent, but that’s not always the case, particularly with PDF files which can be in either location.

It’s about 55% through indexing now. The Google Outlook toolbar is much faster than X1’s. Plus, if you view the email search results in your browser, you can also view by thread. So, look for an email from a certain person on a certain subject and also get the history of where that email “fits” in a larger conversation. Cool.