According to Tom Spring, Google Desktop allows one to access all files on the PC where it runs, including those belonging to other users.

(so now - does this post belong into the tools or fun category? ;-)

Of course, this might not make much difference as many people have their windows accounts configured with administrator rights to be able to do useful work anyway.

But the most suprising part is Google's director of consumer web products, according to the same article, saying that Google Desktop Search is not intended to be used on computers that are shared with more than one person. Aha. Maybe they're just going to tell users to not be evil with the stuff that they find in this way?

Hmm...Google's ranking just went down a fair bit in my internal stuff-that-works index ;-)

Update: J Aaron Farr says "Google Desktop doesn't introduce new security issues. It plainly reveals existing ones". Fully agreed. What worries me more is Google's director declaration (assuming it is real - a Google search shows it being mentioned in many places).