Charles on… anything that comes along

Google has rather beaten Microsoft to the punch with the launch of its local search product (Windows only, Explorer-only at present). Although Andrew Brown isn’t thrilled, and points out that you can do much the same with the open-source alternative DocSearcher which uses Java etc so might be Mac-friendly. (I might try it, though OSX has its own content indexing function.)

Let’s leave aside not being on Mac (which is understandable) or non-IE browsers (rather harder). What’s bugging me and other British hacks is that this got launched and annoucned in the US, and spread through the blogosphere very quickly; Dave Winer was ecstatic at 8am his time, 1pm ours, yesterday. (Though reality has now begun to intrude - see his post a few hours later.)

Google has a UK arm. People in the UK can read stuff from the US, especially technology news. Next Wednesday Google has an event launching (apparently) its “Google Search Appliance”. I really hope they’re not waiting a week to show us the same thing again. No, it’s not evil to do that, but it is not smart either. Even Netscape, launching the dire version 6, managed a global, pretty much simultaneous launch.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• I'm with Tosh on this one: no, Google won't do VoIP for you and me (25 January 2005; score: 60.6%)
• When OSX loses its mind, pt 2: because lookupd has gone mad (3 January 2007; score: 49.41%)
• How the Google hack was done (26 July 2004; score: 48.84%)