It's been a busy couple of years in the suddenly-hot desktop search market. Since October 2003, when Microsoft spilled the beans on its plans to integrate instant desktop search into Windows Longhorn, competitors far and wide have tried to take advantage of Longhorn's delays to release their own desktop search products. The most visible is Apple's Spotlight, a feature of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" (see my review). However, Spotlight has two main limitations: It runs only on the very latest Mac OS X system, severely limiting its exposure, and it has some glaring functional omissions (i.e. it cannot perform advanced Boolean searches or search key parts of the system, including the OS X Help files).

On the PC, instant desktop search products are popping up everywhere. Google was first out of the gate with its Google Desktop Search, but others, like Yahoo! Desktop Search and Copernic Desktop Search soon appeared as well. Each of these products includes basic search functionality with varying degrees of Windows integration. However, each is also somewhat limited.