Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Google Hacks: Please Do Not Use This Program For Illegal Uses

"This program is for educational purposed only." That's the disclaimer I see whenever I visit a warez site (which is the, cough, primary reason I'm there).

I don't know what Google was thinking when they released Google Hacks, but it's a sure bet most people won't abide by the "Please do not use this program for illegal uses" disclaimer you'll find on their download site.

Google Hacks is a front-end GUI you can use as a standalone app (see image below) or as a browser toolbar. It performs searches you can already do -- if you know the syntax. For instance, if I wanted to search for Dave Brubeck, I could pop the following into Google's search field.

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(.mp3|.wma) "Dave Brubeck"

But it's obviously a heck of a lot easier to type "Dave Brubeck" into Google Hacks and choose the music category.

Google hacks.jpg
Search for videos, music and more with Google Hacks

Hacking with Google
Google Hacks lets you search in any one of 12 categories -- music, applications, video, books, lyrics, and others. But there's a catch. The searches are indexes -- Web site directories that haven't been protected. Translation: You have to sort through lists of files and some, if not most, could be unrelated to what you're searching for.

googleIndex.jpg
Here are the results of a Google Hacks search

At the same time, you might hit the jackpot -- loads of files with just the content you're looking for. The showstopper is that the content belongs to someone else who doesn't know how to hide it from prying eyes. (And yes, I know, that person may have downloaded the music illegally as well.)

googlejackpot.jpg
Here's plenty of music downloads for Stan Getz fans

So what do you think -- are you going to use Google Hacks?

Source:www.pcworld.com

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