For some time now, most companies have been saying that the next big search product will be desktop search. Who was going to come out with it first and how good was it going to be?
Well HotBot, believe it or not, was one of the first. They had an indexer which could index various files on your computer. You could search via the HotBot toolbar, and results would be displayed in a small pane in your internet browser.
It was cumbersome to set up and frankly, difficult to use. If you had to launch your browser every time you wanted to search your desktop, it becomes too bothersome.
We didn't hear much else on desktop search until Blinkx came along, and we felt that it would be the next big thing in search. Soon after came the Copernic desktop search, and just yesterday AOL announced that it would have their own desktop search, maybe even as soon as this week.