By the end of the year? What a success for google... -_-

So when will google let me choose my own third party to search through their results?

I don't know how does Apple's Spotlight work, but is it possible to disable it completely and use Google Desktop? If not, then no wonder Apple is able to innovate, they don't have all third parties on their back complaining on every improvement to the OS.

You can select what can be searched by Spotlight. So if you selected nothing than I'm not sure that would stop the indexing of your files.

Third Party: Don't be silly, it's like going to McDonalds and request a Burger King's burger...

> Don't be silly, it's like going to McDonalds and request
> a Burger King's burger...

Which would mean when you go to Windows, you also want a Windows burger? I think Google begs to differ...
Of course, when you're at Google.com you are free to switch to say MSN.com instead, at no real (monetary) cost. But when you're using Windows, you can also switch to Linux, at no (monetary) cost. Not to say that the Windows/ Google cases are completely comparable (I think they're not – there's not enough cross-integration in the "Google OS" yet to increase the time costs beyond what would be acceptable... you can still switch away from Google.com search and yet use Gmail!).

Google is not completely happy yet btw:
arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ ...

<<"Microsoft's current approach to Vista desktop search clearly violates the consent decree and limits consumer choice," and the proposed remedies "are a step in the right direction, but they should be improved further to give consumers greater access to alternate desktop search providers.">>
- Google chief legal officer David Drummond

<<Furthermore, Microsoft did not make it possible to change the search defaults in a universal way, instead keeping its search system as the default throughout most of Windows Explorer. In short, Vista's search boxes will by and large return Vista's own search results if you type text into them and hit return.>>