I think desktop search existed before Google's. But not a lot of people used it in my experience. I found Google's to be fantastic,a and it was nice it showed results in line with the mostly used search engine. I was surprised when they discontinued it too, and suspect it was some "gentlemen's (anti-consumer) agreement" between companies around turf.

My theory was that google saw it as a way to seed their drive service or the strategy changed and the future was not desktop