Google is targeting the computer hard drive with software that promises to scour the clutter of documents, e-mails, instant messages and other stored files. The free desktop-search program at desktop.google.com, marks Google`s latest attempt to become even more indispensable to the millions of people who entrust the company to find virtually anything on the Web.

Marissa Mayer, Google`s director of consumer Web products, called the program `the photographic memory of your computer. If there`s anything you once saw on your computer screen, we think you should be able to find it again quickly,` she said.

Leery of raising privacy concerns that have shadowed its recently introduced e-mail service, Google is emphasizing that the desktop search program doesn`t provide a peephole into the hard drive, even when the product connects with the online search engine. But Pam Dixon, executive director for the World Privacy Forum, said she will withhold judgment until she makes a thorough review. `The key question will be if this thing ever phones home to the mother ship,` she said...

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