14 DAY TRIAL // The last software signed by Google is an application aimed at enterprises based on Google Desktop Search.
Google Desktop Search Enterprise can be downloaded for free, so as soon as we filled in the form, the application was ours.
The Enterprise edition comes with a .PDF file with instructions for administrators, which helped us a lot to install the application on a 10 computer network. For this task we chose the Group Policy Software Installation (assigned) method.
Immediately after the installation was completed, Google Desktop Search Enterprise started to index files, the process lasting between 3 and 5 hours depending on the number of files from the hard-disk. For a PC with 40% of the space occupied by files, the indexing took 2 hours and 30 minutes, and for a system with a 95% ratio, the process lasted 5 hours and 42 minutes.
We have to mention that following the instructions provided in Admin.PDF, we set Google Desktop Search not to index all the information, and removed from the indexing list e-mails and web histories. We also set the application to encrypt the data and to deactivate Web Search, which means Google Desktop Search Enterprise indexed only the data from the Intranet.
After approximately 6 hours, we had at our disposal a powerful search engine, capable of searching in a matter of seconds the information we requested without interfering with the users' activity or to compromise their personal data.
The average duration of one search was around 0.6 seconds. Compared to the Search function from Windows XP which took 60 seconds to complete the task, Google Desktop Search Enterprise did a much better job, obtaining a 2 second result.
Moreover, Google Desktop Search Enterprise comes with a familiar interface for those who have tried the end-user version and the add-ons downloaded from http://desktop.google.com/plugins.html worked without any problems.
So if you need an Intranet search engine, all you need to do is be patient and read the documentation.