Anyone can fill me in on what spotlight plugins are?

[blow45]

For example I recently discovered I have the following?

Appleworks
Gbspotlightimporter
iwork
microsoft office
parallelsMD

What are they? What do they do and how can I remove them?

(I've heard somewhere that they can cause slow downs, is that accurate?)

 

[GGJstudios]

(I've heard somewhere that they can cause slow downs, is that accurate?)

After doing a bit of research, here are a few links that may provide insight:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/spotlight/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20023166-263.html
http://www.macresearch.org/spotlight_plugins_0​

 

[blow45]

Thanks! I was thinking along the lines of someone giving me the quick and dirty of it.

 

[gnasher729]

For example I recently discovered I have the following?

Appleworks
Gbspotlightimporter
iwork
microsoft office
parallelsMD

What are they? What do they do and how can I remove them?

(I've heard somewhere that they can cause slow downs, is that accurate?)

That's like asking what cars are there for, and you heard they can kill people 😱

You know Spotlight, right? Press Command-Space, enter any text, and Spotlight finds all documents containing that text. To do that, Spotlight must be able to read these documents, and Spotlight cannot possibly know how to read any document in the world. Therefore, for example Microsoft wrote a "Spotlight Plugin" for Microsoft Office documents, and Spotlight uses it to find all the text in Microsoft Office plugins, and other companies did the same. Without that plugin, for example, Spotlight wouldn't be able to find things in Excel or Word documents.

 

[blow45]

oh I see, thanks, so third parties are responsible for this, or is apple making these plugins? Is there any chance that a plugin might be a. corrupted, b. superfluous?