Google has fired the latest salvo in the desktop search battle, introducing an enterprise version of its popular tool Wednesday.

Google Desktop Search for the Enterprise offers additional security features that I.T. managers will find useful -- including the ability to encrypt the index of files on the computer to prevent unauthorized use.

But even authorized use presents some privacy and security issues that enterprises will have to address, Jim Slaby of Yankee Group pointed out.

"The problem is," he said, "that there are certain things on most people's desktop computers that they don't necessarily want to be found."

Legitimate Personal Use

For example, many enterprise computer policies allow employees to use their desktop machines to perform basic online tasks during their free time, like on a lunch break.

Corporate employees perform a wide range of personal tasks during those times -- accessing their financial accounts via online banking, for instance, or viewing personal e-mail via Web interfaces.

Some of those Web pages, noted Slaby, will be cached by Internet Explorer and served up in the results of a desktop search.

Even if the page was accessed through an encrypted Internet link, confidential information might be stored on the personal computer.

Google Counterpoint

Matthew Glotzbach disagrees with Slaby, pointing out that Google has taken privacy concerns into account and has implemented settings that the user can configure to suit their preferences.

First, Glotzbach points out that, contrary to Slaby's statement, Google's Desktop Search for Enterprise does not actually index the browser's cache, but rather uses a separate mechanism to index the Web pages as they are being viewed by the user.

Second, Glotzbach adds that, by default, Google Desktop Search is configured so as not to index secure Web pages -- that is, those that start with the "https://" prefix.

The user, he explained, can choose to enable the indexing of secure pages manually and, in fact, can do so as selectively as he or she chooses. For example, the user can choose to index secure pages generally, but can exclude a particular secure URL, like one that displays private online banking information.

"The user has a large amount of choice of which Web pages the Google search will index," he said.

The software is intended for use in a corporate environments in which both users and administrators have the ability to affect settings. "We did not give the administrator the control to enable the searching of secure pages on behalf of the user," Glotzbach explained. "Instead, the admin can only disable that functionality." This capability is intended to prevent the user's private, secure pages from being indexed unknowingly.

Pause for Lunch (continued...)

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