

there is no uninstallation tool for you.it can't be configured via a setting menu.it frequently sending data back to Google without your knowledge.
#Updating chrome on mac install#

#Updating chrome on mac update#
What does Google Software Update do?Īccording to Google Chrome Privacy Whitepaper, Google Software Update send information such as the version of your Google Chrome (or other Google Apps), its release channel, your computer's hardware information. But to bad guys, this is an open source software that could be twisted and disguised to be malware or spyware. For a few good guys, this could be a tool provide seamless update with good user experience. Try to imaging that any software can use Omaha to securely install a piece of software on my Mac without my explicit permission and sending information about my usage patterns.

This actually make me very uncomfortable. In another word, Google not only using a special version of Omaha itself, it also hoping others will adopt the technology. According to the Omaha github page, Omaha is the open-source version of Google Update. This leads me to Google's github under a project code name Omaha. Google Software Update is used to support software patching (both background updating, and on-demand update checks) for Google Chrome, Earth, and a variety of other Google products on at least Mac and Windows as far as I know (and it probably on Linux platform as well).Īccording to Google, "in order to provide greater transparency and to make the technology available to other applications, the Google Update technology is open source" (Quoted from "Google Chrome Privacy Whitepaper"). Google Update on some of Google websites) is a program to install requested software and keep it up to date and running in the background without your knowledge on your computer.
#Updating chrome on mac full#
Like everything nowadays, I did a quick search on the Internet, and turns out there are full pages of search results related to this topic on the Internet, including an article from called "Why Google's software update tool is evil" that dated back to 2009! The only Google software that I have on my Mac is Chrome browser. When I trying to find out why my cron job doesn't work (just to be clear, it has nothing to do with what I described in this article) a couple of days ago, I came across tons of quite verbose logs generated by a background daemon called GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent on my MacBook Pro's system.log. Google Keystone (Google's codename for its Google Software Update) has "mutated" since I published this article, be sure you read the "Update on July 2019" below. Google Software Update is not a malware, but it behaves like a one. I never know there is a software called Google Software Update that is installed in my Mac without my knowledge and sending data back to google more frequent than it is necessary until a couple of days ago.
