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Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame

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Yet another application that doesn't work under LUA (Least privilege User Account).

1) You can't install this program unless you're an administrator. This isn't surprising, and isn't really all that big of a deal, until you consider,

2) This program won't launch unless you're running under the same account you installed it under. LAME!

It's a sad day when the folks at Google blow it this bad.

Update: here's their solution. Add yourself to admin group, install, remove yourself. Seems to be working so far. You know, if they'd just defer launching the application - let you launch it under the account you plan on using it under, I think it'd be fine. This is an easy fix - hopefully they will fix it before the final release.

Posted Oct 15 2004, 06:53 AM by keith-brown
Filed under: ,

Comments

mike wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 7:00 AM
Yea, but once it's running, this app rocks! It's pathetic that MS can't find a way to search their own OS. Google got it right with tis one.
Keith Brown wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 7:06 AM
Oh I won't argue with you about being shocked that Google beat MS to the punch here. I just had such high expectations from the Google guys. They've really let me down.

Of course this is beta software. I sent them an email detailing the problem, so hopefully they will remedy it before release.
justin wrote Yeah, except for the whole email thing
on 10-15-2004 7:07 AM
If you install as Admin, and run it as Admin, but you run under another account, it doesn't find your Outlook mailbox. Which is just, well, lame.
Keith Brown wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 7:14 AM
That's not surprising since the mailbox is part of your user profile. After you posted your comment, I updated this entry with instructions on how to get it working as non-admin. Try it - it's at least running for me now; not sure if it'll be able to index everything (it should, I think though).

Hopefully this will fix it!
Steve Johnson wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 7:15 AM
Just out of curiosity, what should it do if you're not an admin? Should it maintain a seperate index DB for each user? What should it then index, every file it can access and just ignore the ones it can't access? Or should it just index files in the user's profile? Web history only?

I would of course agree that apps should allow non-admins to run, but there seem to be some tricky issues here.
Keith Brown wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 7:19 AM
Steve,

They have to require higher privilege to install, but they should defer indexing until the application is actually launched by a user.

The problem is that as soon as you install it, they assume that same user is the one who will be using the program.

Indexing definitely needs to be done on a per-user basis, because a lot of the things they are indexing are in the user profile, and are not accessible to other users.

So they are close - their install/startup procedure just needs a little work.
Robert Hurlbut wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 7:46 AM
I used the MakeMeAdmin.cmd shell from Aaron Margosis this morning to install Google Desktop on my laptop. I had a hunch that it would be specific to the Admin account and it appears I am right. Using Aarons shell script, I am able to temporarily set up a session where my non-Admin account is in the Administrator group and then install the app with all the references pointing to my non-admin account. Closing the session, I am no longer in the Administrator group.
Patrick Foley wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 8:22 AM
I think you can't add software to the Hall of Shame until it's out of beta. You can throw a flag for sure, but Hall of Shame should be reserved for released products.
Kris wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 8:44 AM
A little off topic but along the same lines. Is it possible to run IE with least user previleges? I suspect my IE has been hacked with some BHO as it keeps opening connections to remote machines on port 8080 even though I am not browsing. I dont want IE to open any files on my system as I have some financial statements on my machine. Any info/links towards this issue would be very much appreciated.
dominick wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 9:01 AM
repave you machine - now.
jason kemp .ca wrote Google Desktop Search
on 10-15-2004 10:25 AM
Robert Hurlbut wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 10:27 AM
Kris -- I agree with Dominick. You may get rid of this problem, but who knows how many other ways your machine has now been compromised.
Mike Dimmick wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 11:22 AM
I have a really big rant about Sony's SonicStage and MD Simple Burner software at http://mikedimmick.blogspot.com/2004/09/new-minidisc-player.html and http://mikedimmick.blogspot.com/2004/09/more-minidisc.html.

By the way, what's happened to your old Hall of Shame page? I submitted something about Windows Media Player (you can't pick which application plays your files unless you're an administrator) earlier this year - sad to say, it's still a problem in WMP10.
Fred wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-15-2004 1:29 PM
Take this post as a trackback. There are some of my toughs about the product, privacy and security in mind:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0140770/2004/10/14.html
Fred wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-16-2004 11:12 AM
Hello,

Okay, there is the part 2 of my thoughts about the subject. It talk about the logging problem with AIM chat software. I think that it's always a good thing to know:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0140770/2004/10/16.html
Fred wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-16-2004 11:12 AM
Hello,

Okay, there is the part 2 of my thoughts about the subject. It talk about the logging problem with AIM chat software. I think that it's always a good thing to know:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0140770/2004/10/16.html
Keith Brown wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-19-2004 5:56 AM
Mike:

I've added a link to the Hall of Shame. It was still there, but since DevelopMentor stopped redirecting my site, the old link broke. Sorry!

The new link is:

http://www.pluralsight.com/keith/hallOfShame/
Norman Diamond wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-19-2004 4:52 PM
Now the Hall of Shame's front page is viewable, but it contains broken links saying Keith Brown that now bring up DevelopMentor's front page.
Keith Brown wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 10-19-2004 5:33 PM
Ack - I guess I should fix those ;-)

Thanks.
Geek Noise wrote Geek Notes 2004-10-21
on 10-21-2004 10:17 AM
krishna wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 04-13-2005 11:06 AM
Is GDS user problem is fixed or not??
Matt M wrote re: Google Desktop added to Hall of Shame
on 07-06-2006 2:01 PM
Well, Google did not fix this before release... I ran into this problem big time a few months ago -- our domain name changed and therefore Windows considered me to be a different user than before. Because of this, Google Desktop wouldn't work any more. To make matters worse, it wouldn't uninstall (only the user that installed it could uninstall), and I couldn't install a new version of Google Desktop because you can't install a new version until you've uninstalled the old version!

They finally did fix this with one of their most recent releases, but it had me stuck for a while.


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