The dawn of the digital age has seen rapid expansion of the web, with the advent of massive amounts of free information becoming accessible to all. Organising this information is clearly a mammoth task, but it's one that Google, the world's leading search engine, has undertaken - with, you might say, more than a small amount of success. Google's new desktop, launched yesterday, is just the latest of Google's new products. For the past several months, experts at the search engine company have been secretly beavering away with the express aim of making the Google desktop more freely available and easily accessible, creating new combinations of desktop gadgets and a desktop sidebar. As such, the Google Desktop 5 beta has recently been released to install, free of charge.
The most cosmetic of the changes made to the Google desktop is simple and hard to escape: they've just made it look a darn site prettier. With various customisable options, all its existing widgets and gadgets are now available in a variety of different schemes to closely match the unique aesthetics of your desktop. While this may seem superficial, it's nothing to sniff at - after all, a shiny and lustrous appearance seems to have done wonders for Apple's image!
Deeper level changes include the improvement of the desktop search function, in order to help you find what you're searching for in a quick and useful manner. Now when searches are undertaken at the desktop level, search results are displayed inside the browser straight away, so users no longer have to wait for an entire extra application to load before the results are displayed.
Security is also a major factor of the new update. With the recent wide proliferation of malware and adware software, Google Desktop now scans any site to or from which you may be sending or receiving information - be it email, instant messaging or browsing the web. It then checks to see if the site is trying to send malicious information to your computer and issues an appropriate warning
