Google Open Sources Updater

Jamie noticed the news that Google Update is now Open Source. The article acknowledges the privacy and security concerns of an application that is always running in the background of your machine, and authorized to install new software. And Google made the logically obvious conclusion that releasing the source code would alleviate those concerns.

Comments

concerns alleviated...

[datapharmer]

Well I feel much safer now knowing that the updater is open source. I have for one have no worries about the code actually being updated... that of course is completely kosher.

For the love of god

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone add a feature to turn it off completely.

Re:For the love of god

[Jamie's Nightmare]

Here's a wild and crazy idea. You could disable the Google Updater Service via Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Services. I know.... I know.... radical, but it actually works. Imagine that.

Re:For the love of god

[dfm3]

Google has already provided instructions on how to uninstall the updater.

Of course, it will be reinstalled within a few hours if you run another Google program. On my Mac I just changed permissions on the /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate and ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate folders to 000, and Google Earth no longer reinstalls the updater or asks me to do so. I never gave GE my password. I'm not sure what the workaround is for Windows.

Re:For the love of god

[Perseid]

And don't forget to turn off the scheduled event to turn the service back on. And don't forget to do it all over again every time you install/update anything by Google. Also, the instructions to kill it don't seem to be the same all the time. Maybe it depends on exactly what app you're installing. Maybe it's just Google trying to screw with my mind. Google Update needs to die.

Re:Finally some justification

[eln]

Yes, but as always happens when you open source software, a huge community will immediately spring up from the ground to fork it and start adding features to it. After a few months, that community will decide what it really needs is a ground-up rewrite. After 5 years and several hundred alpha releases, you'll be able to download the first beta of the rewritten app, which by this point will have morphed into an entire Linux distribution which, unfortunately, lacks decent software update capabilities.

A Bad Idea Made Worse

[InklingBooks]

I'd agree with Bluestone's remarks and add some of my own.

First, an always running updater is a security hole of the first order. Gain access to it, and someone malicious could do anything it could do, meaning alter applications without our knowledge.

Second, there's in this the now-typical Google 'we rule the world' attitude in this--much like that at Microsoft fifteen years ago. Why should Goggle applications has an always running updater while other don't? Not even Apple makes that sort of demands and OS X is one heck of a lot more important to a Mac than anything Google might do.

Third, CmdrTaco is being naive if he thinks open sourcing an abomination leads to the "obvious conclusion" that it's to be trusted. He forgets that the danger lies in the code that's being downloaded, not the code that is doing the downloading. It's the idea itself that's bad not the implementation.

Finally, what does Google intend this open sourcing to do? Do they want every application on our computer to have an auto-update-without-asking running continually in the background? Bad as what Google is doing, that'd be an even worse horror. And like Google, they're not likely to tell us what they're doing.

I believe it was the philosopher Kant who offered as a moral test the question, "What would the world be like if everyone did this?" One person lying doesn't usually do much harm. Everyone lying would make life almost unbearable.

Having every application behaving like Google's would be an utter disaster. Open-sourcing Google's code makes as much sense as marketing a "Do It Yourself A-Bomb Kit" in the Middle East. The malicious genie is out of the bottle. Now we have to consider the possibility that every obscure application we download contains Google's dastardly code. A seemingly benign application could mutate on command into a monster. And because it spreads any time we're online, it could spread like wildfire. Google doesn't even seem to have been thinking when they came up with open-sourcing their monster.

What the Greeks called hubris, overweening pride, has struck again. Google has replaced Microsoft as the giant, high-tech business that seems most clueless about the distinction between good and evil, sensible and foolish. They censored the Internet for China, they claimed to own every book not in print, and now they want to determine what's on our computers without our consent and without our knowledge.

Re:Missing The Point

[ultrabot]

There are several reasons why Google Update runs all the time that you're missing, but the crucial assumption you seem to be making is that the process is "constantly running using up resources".

All of this handwaving is unnecessary, since the problem is "ethical" in a sense. The user does not want to have google updater running for whatever reason => the user should be able to remove it whenever he wants. I suppose the rootkit sony installed back in the day didn't consume too much resources either.

Malware

[S77IM]

Google Update installs itself without my permission, runs without notifying me, and is difficult to disable and uninstall. This fits my definition of malware. I'd like to have an option for my anti-virus and anti-malware software to start detecting and destroying programs like these.

  -- 77IM