The Google Software Update Agent

Published July 26, 2008

I was quite surprised when I saw a Google icon show up in my menubar today:

GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent menubar icon

Not only did this icon look absolutely horrid, I can't even remember installing a Google Updater. The only Google application I installed was the App Engine Launcher for OS X, and it doesn't have any updater-options nor does the documentation mention a single word about it.

So I went through a few emails from the google-appengine mailing list. It turns out that the Google App Engine Launcher for OS X also installs the Google Software Update Agent and adds it as a startup item — without mentioning it to the user.

Disabling the startup item can be done by deleting the file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist or adding a new "Disabled" property to it (in case you want to keep the file):

<key>Disabled</key>
<true/>

It's kind of surprising to see such a behavior from Google, and I'm sure that I'm not the only user who is slightly upset about this.

Comments

Niyaz on August 25, 2008
In my computer, I can see two googleUpdater processes. I cannot remove them from start up because they are not present in the start up !!!? I use windows BTW.

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infoentropy on September 4, 2008
Thanks for this. This has been bothering me for weeks. Google updates that stupid app engine thing every other day.

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Nick on September 15, 2008
I discovered this the same way you did. Totally horrifying and very Microsoft-like, shame on you google. Completely removing it though requires some more effort. Note that it re-installs itself every time you run the App Engine Launcher (evil). First you'll need to tell launchd to kill the updater process and not attempt to reload it when we delete it later. In Terminal, type: launchctl remove com.google.keystone.user.agent That should kill the daemon (named GoogleSomethingOrOther..., check Activity Monitor to make sure it's dead). Now you'll need to delete both Google's .plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents, and the Google support folder ~/Library/Google. (why isn't it in Application Support like it should be!). You'll also need to delete the following file from within the application package to prevent it from reinstalling the updater: /Applications/GoogleAppEngineLauncher.app/Contents/Frameworks/KeystoneRegistration.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Keystone.tbz And you should be clean. Remember to delete that .tbz file again when you update the app yourself.

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Daniel on October 14, 2008
Hi I deleted the file as prompted. However the process hasn't stopped and every time I try to close it it pops up again. Any suggestions? Has Google closed that loophole? Regards Daniel

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Dickster on October 29, 2008
Visit the following URL: http://www.google.com/support/installer/bin/answer.py?answer=100386 Check to see if you have a system-wide version in /Library, or a user version in your ~/Library, and choose the appropriate command from the site above to --uninstall the GoogleSoftwareUpdate stuff. Note that this doesn't seem to affect your existing Google apps, like Google Earth. It simply stops the dynamic updating. But be aware that Google may reactivate GoogleSoftWareUpdate. Alternatives are to add the "Disabled" code to the appropriate plist, or to change RunAtLoad's option to <false>. Good Luck.

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