Google Desktop goes multilingual, adds festive gadgets

Angus Kidman
Thursday, 21 December 2006 13:53

Your IT - Home IT

Google has added support for 28 new languages to its recently updated Desktop 4.5 client, as well as making a nod to the festive season with a bunch of Christmas-themed gadgets.

"Since the debut of the new transparent Sidebar in Google Desktop 4.5, we've been working to make it widely available outside of the English-speaking world," product marketing manager Mendel Chuang notes in a post on the main Google blog.

"We're finally done, and now you can get it in any of 28 languages."

Simultaneously, Google has also rolled out five new Christmas-themed Desktop gadgets for search enthusiasts who want to take a late stab at decorating their PC. Options include three different virtual Christmas trees, a carol-playing picture frame and a New Year countdown clock.

Adding extra functions to Desktop is one strategy Google is using to position its services in competition to conventional operating systems like Windows Vista and Mac OS X, both of which make extensive use of similar desktop mini-applications. One of the main enhancements to version 4.5 was the addition of a transparent sidebar, and transparency is also a major interface feature for Vista.

Such aesthetic concerns aside, the search software has sometimes proved controversial, especially since an option exists to copy data directly from individual PCs to Google's servers to allow searching when away from the machine.