Googling this error message shows lots of other people running into the same problem. Some bandwidth limit on Google’s side is cutting me off. When this happens, I’m put in a penalty box and not allowed to connect via IMAP for some period of time.

I’m not using mail excessively. I don’t get a lot of big messages; I do get a lot of spam but there’s not much I can do about that.

Other users have complained to Google and gotten nowhere. I’m not paying for this service so it’s not like I can call a customer support line and threaten to quit. What can I do?

It’s not H.264, but it’s good enough. And now presumably it won’t cost Google anything more to distribute it.

There’s been speculation for years about Google introducing an OS, but somehow the actual announcement seems anti-climatic. Maybe it’s because of the existing prevalence of Netbooks running Linux. It makes me wonder what Google stands to gain by doing this.

This is a scenario that Microsoft has been working hard to prevent, and has apparently failed at. A laptop that runs Chrome (and has the Flash player) is all most people need in a computer. Flash covers the games and rich multimedia, Chrome with JavaScript and HTML5 cover the applications, and what else is there? For most users, that’s it.

Google’s timing on this is bizarre. Second half of 2010? What’s the point of pre-announcing something that’s over a year away? This is also somewhat out of character for Google, who, like Apple, traditionally don’t announce things until they’re ready to use. They’re doing the same thing with Google Wave, and it’s strange there too.

Another interesting aspect is that this isn’t based on Android. Logically, I think it should be. Is there something about Android that makes it unsuitable for a desktop OS? They’re both based on Linux, and I don’t see why they can’t both be distributions of the same core. Two teams that are doing basically the same thing in parallel isn’t a good way to run a business, especially a big one like an OS business.

This is a good move for the industry even if I don’t think it’s a great move for Google. The resurgence of the Mac platform (including the iPhone), and Netbooks, have given the computing world a future that doesn’t depend on Windows. Over 10% of traffic on the web is now not Windows based – still a small number, but a growing one. Windows 7 is a great OS, but now it has to compete on its merits, and not on the inability for its users to choose an alternative.

But what they don’t mention anywhere is why I’d want to use Google Desktop when Spotlight already does such a great job on the Mac.

I get that it searches your Gmail. That’s actually a nice feature. I have Mail downloading my Gmail through to my local system so Spotlight can see it, but having it index the mail right there in Gmail would be nice.

But I’m not willing to have two content indexes of all the stuff on my computer.

If Google Desktop uses the Spotlight database for the local system, then I’ll use it. But Google’s expertise is search, so I’m guessing they wouldn’t use the platform’s built-in search. Anyone know for sure?

Google needs to have an AdSense ad to sell into every AdWords ad spot that’s created on the Web. If they don’t have an ad to put on your site, they instead show these Public Service Announcement type ads, to fill the space.

Usually you get the PSA ads when your site is new and Google hasn’t figured out what kind of ads to post there yet, but these were established sites.

Very strange. I wonder if Google is experiencing a bit of an ad shortage?

I registered an application and the author sent me a license key, but I never got it.  A few days later I sent him and email and he sent me a copy of the message he originally sent me, so I searched for the license key and found only this email – so it hadn’t ended up in the Spam filter.

Occasionally when I sign up for a forum, I never get the “click this link to verify your email address” message.  I’ve assued it’s just been broken sites, but now I’m thinking Gmail is just dropping mail on me.

One significant result is that Google Desktop Search is way faster than Vista’s search. 

A simple test:  Search for a specification that I have in a PDF file in my Documents folder.  GDS returned it seemingly instantly, while typing the same search query into the Start menu caused 10 seconds of disk grinding before giving me the same first result.

It’s actually kind of depressing to see how making the ads more intrusive increases the rate that people click on them.  But it’s true.

There’s a balance, of course – I don’t want the site to look like Las Vegas because that’ll drive away the kind of people I’d like to think want to read my blog.

Most of the time, when I pick ads, I choose image-only ads – mostly because my blog and most of my posts don’t have any images, and I find they just make the page look more interesting.  Sometimes Google doesn’t have an image to put there, and that’s OK; I’d rather have white space than a text ad – the text ads just seem more distracting to me.

What do you think?