Lookout vs. Google

When it comes to keeping old data around, especially in inboxes, most users are pack rats to some degree. Deleting old messages is tedious, and most people only do it when forced to free up some space in the mailbox. Mailbox quotas have grown steadily since Microsoft first launched Exchange Server in 1996, and today, most corporate mailboxes allow between 150MB and 300MB, not counting the collection of Personal Store files (PSTs) that most Microsoft Outlook users accumulate over time. Cached Exchange Mode in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 lets users keep a complete local copy of their Exchange mailboxes. And larger PC disks can keep even more data. So why worry? Just store, store, store. This unchecked accumulation is fine until a message that a user needs becomes a needle in a vast data haystack. Fortunately, Google and Microsoft both offer desktop search engines that can help users dig through that haystack. Which tool should you consider? Let's take a look at how Microsoft Lookout and Google Desktop stack up.

The Contenders
Microsoft Lookout is a free Outlook add-on that provides better indexing and retrieval capabilities than Outlook's standard Find, Advanced Find, or Search Folders features can provide. Microsoft hasn't said when the technology will appear in its products, although a recently released new version of Windows Desktop Search (available at http://toolbar.msn.com) completes with Google Desktop. (Windows Desktop Search has an optional Adobe add-in that lets you search PDFs.) Lookout's relative maturity (Microsoft acquired the product and its developer in July 2004) makes it a good bet that it will be included in Outlook soon, but in the interim, you can use Lookout. Be aware that the original Lookout developers warn that you can't expect formal support, patches, or enhanced versions because they're busy integrating their work with Microsoft products. However, I haven't experienced any major problems with Lookout in the last year; the product seems pretty stable.

Google is synonymous with search in the minds of most computer users, so Google Desktop (launched in October 2004 with a second version released in August 2005)—with its ability to search Outlook data alongside files and the Web—gives Microsoft significant competition in the desktop search space. Table 1 shows a comparison of the two products' features. Let's take a closer look at their functionality.

Installing and Indexing
You can download Lookout 1.2 at http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/lookoutinfo.html; Google Desktop is available from http://desktop.google.com. Lookout supports Outlook 2000 and later, but before you can install Lookout, you need to install the .NET Framework 1.1 (available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/downloads/framework1_1). Google Desktop supports Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Windows XP and doesn't require the .NET Framework. But apart from email, Google Desktop supports indexing only of pages held in the browser cache and supports both Internet Explorer (IE) and the Mozilla Firefox browser. Google also indexes hard-disk files, including Microsoft Office documents. Both products install painlessly and quickly. After installation, Outlook loads Lookout as a COM add-in every time Outlook starts. Google Desktop runs as a personal Web server that uses three processes and loads a personal browser helper DLL into IE.

Lookout's normal operating model is to index data when Outlook is inactive, meaning that it adds new items to the index by waking up hourly, but only if Outlook isn't busy. By default, Lookout rebuilds the complete index from scratch weekly to ensure that the index is up to date and valid. Lookout signals indexing activity through discrete pop-ups, which users can suppress. Users can use the settings on the Lookout Options dialog box's Index tab to control when Lookout indexes data. As Figure 1 shows, you can also use these settings to specify which files Lookout indexes. Because the product is an Outlook add-in, the obvious place to begin is to index Outlook data, both in Exchange folders (mailbox and public folders) and PSTs. You can add sources to the index by clicking Add Outlook (to specify folders in mailboxes, public stores, and PSTs) or Add Files (to add files on any disk that your PC can access).

Google Desktop waits for a low level of system activity, then performs its indexing in much the same way as Lookout does. However, the Google Desktop Preferences dialog box offers fewer options to control the program. Users can select which data sources to index and, in a rudimentary fashion, which to exclude. Google Desktop isn't tied to Outlook in the same way as Lookout is, so it can also index Microsoft Outlook Express messages. Note that Google asks you to send them non-personal usage data and crash information. I opted to disable this choice, and I think many other users will do the same, mostly because of privacy concerns. A better definition of non-personal usage data would help convince me to cooperate.

The biggest difference between Lookout and Google Desktop is Google's close integration with the browser, which lets the product intercept search requests as they're made, split them between local and Web data (sending the request on to Google to search the Web), then integrate the two streams of returned data into a seamless response. Also, Google Desktop doesn't index email attachments or the contents of public folders, whereas Lookout does. If you let it, Google Desktop can index AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) online chats (but not Microsoft Instant Messenger). I don't think many people will choose this option because online chats have always been considered a transient, almost throwaway, kind of communication. But if you opt to index IM conversations, you can launch new chats with correspondents from remembered conversations.

By default, Google Desktop indexes all local disks. This approach might create a problem if you use the tool on a shared PC because the index might incorporate data from sources that you don't want to include in search results.

Both programs begin indexing data immediately after installation, but Lookout gives you a finer degree of control over the indexing operation than Google Desktop does. For example, if you want to build an index immediately, you can simply click Indexer in the Lookout menu, then click Start. Lookout also displays a progress bar and reports details as indexing proceeds. If the PC is inactive, indexing proceeds quickly. In my case, Lookout indexed 23,520 documents across a range of Exchange and disk folders in about 10 minutes on a PC equipped with a 1.6GHz Pentium M and 512MB of RAM. I used Outlook 2003 running in Cached Exchange Mode, so all data was local. If you index data in public folders that aren't synchronized with the local cache or use a version of Outlook that doesn't support Cached Exchange Mode, indexing will be slower because Lookout will need to connect to the Exchange server to read the content.

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