Yahoo Widgets vs Google Desktop

Yahoo launched a new version of Yahoo Widgets (previously known as Konfabulator), a free application that displays small widgets on your desktop. Launched in 2002 for Mac, and then ported to Windows, Konfabulator was bought in 2005 by Yahoo.

Google Desktop was launched in 2004 as a desktop search tool, but it started to include support for widgets in 2005. "Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information – even without searching. You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in," said Marissa Mayer.

While Konfabulator is the real innovator, Google Desktop combined widgets with search and focused on personalization. Here's a small comparison table:

	Google Desktop	Yahoo Widgets
Platforms	Windows 2000/XP/Vista	Mac OSX, Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Setup size	1.7 MB	11.6 MB
Terminology	gadgets	widgets
Default widgets	Gmail, clock, To Do list, news, feed reader, sticky notes, photos, weather.	Yahoo! search, maps, notepad, address book, mail, photos, Flickr, Calendar, Weather, Finance, digital clock, CPU monitor, widget gallery.
Total number of widgets	360	3884
Rendering	In the same process as Google Desktop.	Each widget has its own process: as a result, Yahoo Widgets is more stable, but also uses more memory.
Widgets are built in	XML and JavaScript	XML and JavaScript
What you can do with widgets	Can be detached from the sidebar Collapsible Always on top	Heads-up display: show/hide all the widgets at once Expand the widget Resize the widget, move it on your desktop Change the frame, the opacity
What's unique	Desktop search engine Recommendations Google Desktop can display many gadgets available at Google Personalized Homepage You can save the settings for some gadgets on Google's servers Using Google Talk as a communication protocol Alerts	Bigger developer community Widgets have comments, ratings Widgets look better and are more customizable
Performance	Google Desktop also indexes your computer, so it has worse performance. If you disable desktop search functionality, you'll reduce memory usage.	The latest version improves memory usage. The performance is similar to Google Desktop without desktop search.

Yahoo Widgets is for people who want to spread a lot of information chaotically on the desktop; there are plenty of sleek widgets to choose from. Google Desktop is for organized people: it lets you search you computer as well as the web, it shows a sidebar that's visible all the time and personalizes the gadgets automatically.