There has been some discussion about the new Search Across Computers feature released last week in Google Desktop 3 beta, and we want to chime in. Admittedly we're of two minds on this: on the one hand, we know that our friends on the Desktop team have gone to great lengths to protect users' data and privacy.
On the other hand, we are the Enterprise team, and we understand that a company's data is more precious than gold -- and you don't go passing your gold around. So we should point you to Google Desktop 3 for Enterprise (beta) which can put your security fears to rest. This product has all the features of the consumer version -- and then some. It also includes full administrative control. Administrators can use the standard group policy settings to completely disable product features, such as the Search Across Computer functionality, so users cannot send documents from the work computer to their home PC.
The folks at Gartner have written about this, and we agree with their recommendation: "Enterprises that are not using Google Desktop for Enterprise but are allowing employees to use Google's desktop search application should start using the enterprise edition immediately and restrict its use accordingly."
In addition, Enterprise customers have asked for some features we've now added. These features include the ability to set time-based document retention policies for different content types, and a policy to control the indexing load on your Exchange servers. We think that the Enterprise version only strengthens a solid product. If you're reading this at work, you should consider it.
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