Google Desktop moves to the Mac

While Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) co-founders were busy making a quick buck, the company Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded has moved its venerable Google Desktop software to Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) Mac platform as of this week.

Google Desktop for Windows offers quick desktop links to things like Google's e-mail product (Gmail), updates for weather, news and stocks, and a quick way to use Google Search for your computer's contents. In other words, it's a promotional tool for Google's services that happens to be useful. It's similar to Apple's "widgets" and now, Microsoft's "gadgets." Now it's on the Mac, too.

So, if you need a way to easily search your Mac's contents for that one file you just cannot seem to find, you might want to take Google Desktop for a spin. But as Apple's Spotlight search system is already pretty darn nice, will Apple fans yawn at having Google Desktop as an option? Is this Google release a non-event for Apple users?

Of course not -- Apple customers who are heavy Google users will probably find Google Desktop to be incredibly useful. Google is trying to make the search experience (e-mail, files, images, videos, etc.) seamless no matter where the content lives -- on the hard drive or on the web.

And good news for Apple veterans: Google Desktop will run on older Macs (Power PC machines) as well as the newer Intel machines.