GOOGLE FIRES THE FIRST SHOT ACROSS THE VALLEY

Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL are hearing, "Who's your daddy?" from Mountain View, California:

Google on Thursday unveiled its first-generation desktop application for searching through personal files and Web history stored locally on a PC, a move that could shake up the landscape of Internet search and raise privacy hackles.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which will report earnings for the first time as a public company next week, has created Google Desktop Search, a thin-client application that lets people retrieve e-mail, Microsoft Office documents, AOL chat logs and a history of Web pages previously viewed, all via a Web browser.

"It's like photographic memory for your computer--if you've seen it before, you should be able to find it," said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products at Google. (full article)