Desktop search predates OSX with Beagle (unfortunately now defunct)

The first pitch I ever heard for Beagle was 'it's like searchlight', so I always assumed it came later- but I looked it up, and it's hard to tell. inotify 0.8 was announced about a month after Steve Jobs started advertising spotlight, and Beagle grew out of Dashboard which certainly has design documents that indicate they wanted to do that. So... I think you might be right.

On a related note, are you Ubuntu's jcastro?