What Google Desktop Installs
I won’t install software like this on my main machine without knowing everything that’s going to be installed. So I installed Google Desktop on a test machine — an iMac G4 running Mac OS X 10.4.9. Before the installation, I used the Unix ls command to generate a list of every file on the startup drive. I ran the same command again after installation and searched for differences.
Gruber says that the installer does some nasty stuff like silently install an input manager and replace the mdimport tool in /System/Library/Frameworks/. Plus, it installs a kernel extension. I also installed it on a test Mac, and now I’m really glad that I did.
After a few minutes, it said it had finished indexing, although searching didn’t find any results. After rebooting, it started indexing again, although the keyboard shortcut (Command-Command) and the icon in the menu bar were no longer active. So, yeah, it’s beta.
I’m not a fan of “live” installers; I want to be able to download and archive the files that will be installed, so that I can see what they are, and also in case I later don’t want to install the current version.
