How is Google Desktop different from Spotlight?

Google Desktop is designed to be a companion to Spotlight, and because the programs share some software components, Spotlight must be enabled to use Google Desktop.

What's Similar:

• Both Google Desktop and Spotlight search your hard disk for information. You can continue to use Spotlight even after you've installed Google Desktop.
• Google Desktop honors Spotlight's "Privacy" settings to prevent certain items from being indexed.

What's Different:

• Google Desktop lets you search the text of webpages you've visited.
• You can search text from old versions of your documents, or even from deleted files.
• You can search your Gmail files even when you're not online.
• In your browser, search results from your computer are integrated with search results from Google.com.