Screw Google and Google Earth - I don't care about your updates

I installed a new version of Google Earth on my Mac just now, and was presented with this dialog when I ran it for the first time.

http://etulas.s3.amazonaws.com/google.png

FUCK YOU, you stupid egotistical assholes. I use your dingy, overhyped product maybe once every 3 months when I’m bored out of my skull and want to see if your satellite image of my house is still 8 years out of date.

And for that, you want to force me to install an application that will always run in the background, always consuming my CPU and memory and network resources, and will “update” your application behind my back whenever it feels like it? What happens if your server gets compromised, and someone replaces Google Earth 5.1 with the Mac equivalent of the Conficker worm? Whose bright idea was this? Whatever happened to just telling me that a new version is available when I start your application?

Why do you think your application is so goddamn important - wait, more than that, why do you think incremental UPDATES to your application are so goddamn important - that you won’t allow me to even run the damn thing without ensuring that it will remain up to date at all times? What’s the worst that can happen - I’m still running 5.0.0 when 5.0.1 comes out, and I don’t get the bugfix that ensures the border between Shitcrap, SD and Bumfuck, ND is rendered properly? I’ll fucking live with it.

This seems to be a pervasive attitude among software developers - they think that because they spend 8 hours a day working on some pissant little application, it must be the most important thing in the whole goddamn world, and people have computers dedicated solely to running just their application, and users should be willing to put up with any level of inconvenience and risk in exchange for the privilege of using it…

Every stupid utility wants to run automatically when you boot your computer. Every developer think it’s okay if their always-running, memory-resident “helper” application wakes itself up every 10 seconds and wastes some CPU cycles, and takes up tens of MB in memory. I installed an HP printer driver a few weeks ago that installed an entire JAVA APPLICATION SERVER to host their dinky little status webpage, that took up 350MB of RAM just sitting idle - and was configured to automatically start on login!

It’s a cronjob, dude, not a background daemon. And it can’t install updates without your consent. You’ll still need to authenticate.

Nope, incorrect. It does silently install updates without asking, for “security reasons”. And it runs as root - it can do whatever it wants to my system without asking.

I don’t have Google Earth on my computer right now, but i can get on board with your rant. I ran into a similar issue yesterday.

I subscribe to MLB.TV, which allows me to watch games live on my computer. This year, they’ve introduced a nw video system, and part of it a program called NexDef, which apparently improves the quality f the streaming video.

Anyway, i installed NexDef and for the most part it seemed to work OK, although it uses more CPU than i think it should. But then i noticed that, even after i finish watching my games, the NexDef program is still running in the background, using between 25 and 50Mb of memory. I know that’s not a lot nowdays, but there’s no reason for it to be running at all when i’m not using it.

Then, out of curiosity, i check my StartUp settings, and find that NexDef is listed to start up every time the computer starts. I have now disabled it in my Startup controls, so it won’t start any more when I boot my computer. I have also added a desktop shortcut that allows me to start NexDef when I’m about to watch baseball. But I shouldn’t have to do this. I simply do not understand why the creators of NexDef didn’t simply design it to start up when I need it, and to shut down when I don’t. It’s really not very hard to do.

Programmers who insist on running their software at startup, whether the user needs it or not, are just lazy programmers.

Not all of us. I try to design stuff that has as little a footprint as possible. Part of the reason is that I hate hate hate stealth apps.

Well that’s kinda fucked up, then. I figured it was similar to Apple’s existing software update functionality.

It’s the quid pro quo for free but useful software. They want their tentacleware on your machine. Your options are accept that or don’t use their free software.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate this shit as much as anyone. But I can’t get past the point that I have as much right to bitch and moan as I pay for the software.

I would never pay for software that pulled this sort of stunt.

Wow, if you think that’s the worse that can happen, you have a blessed life as a software consumer, and evidently live in a universe with no security issues. Apps can have serious bugs that cause crashers, data corruption, or contain security vulnerabilities. You want your app to be up to date.

That’s great in theory, but just about every computer user has a story about an app that was working great until the latest update, after which everything went to hell. The fact is that some updates are released while they’re still buggy as hell.

Either way, that choice should be left to the user, and software that won’t let you install it without giving it carte blanche on your system is crap, IMO. I’m sure Princhester is right that this is considered a price of free software, but i still think it’s pretty crappy.

Plus, everybody knows that Shitcrap is in North Dakota and Bumfuck is in South Dakota.

Well, as you say so yourself, it is.

I’d say it’s a small price to pay for something as useful as Google Earth.

On the other hand, if only I could get my HP printer’s software to stop screaming for ink, unless I am actually attempting to print something


I mean, without actually having to replace the Light Blue Diamond cartridge (or maybe it was Dark Blue Square…)

No, in the OP’s case, it’s not.

Thanks for your “contribution” though.

Blech, tell me about it. HP write the crappiest driver software known to mankind (in a field where there’s considerable competition). My approach to things like that is to let the default Windows drivers handle it if at all possible. Deleting the HP drivers turned my old Laserjet from a complete dog into something actually quite usable.

To the OP: in Windows it’s possible to stop google update from loading with one of a number of tools. Someone in this google groups thread suggests that this tool performs a similar task in OS X (edits launcher daemon files). Perhaps a little tinkering with this might be a way around it? Not a Mac person myself though, so can’t vouch for the program’s safety.

Is this only for the Mac version? I have Google Earth on both my iPod and my PC and I don’t remember it doing this on either of them. On the iPod I’ll get an App Update trigger every once in a while for GE, but it’s still a manual process of me having to accept the app…and same with the version on my PC afaik.

-XT

I think Red Barchetta’s point is that the OP doesn’t have to use any Google product.

I mean review the OP: the free software he chose to download for nothing is “dingy”, he gets hardly any use out of it despite his tremendous “nil” outlay on it, and he feels sufficiently entitled to to whine about how the free imagery he’s getting is out of date despite all of the precisely nothing he pays for it.

Boo fucking hoo.

I still hate the type of tentacleware that the OP is talking about and I wish Google would just give me free stuff without it. But I have trouble getting on board with whining about it, and I’m free to stop using it anytime.

Nailed it.

Google Chrome definitely came with an auto-running background updater, which I disabled using “autoruns” from the Sysinternals suite (which every Windows user should have, by the way - mostly for the vastly superior task manager replacement, Process Explorer). I don’t use Google Earth, but the updater also comes with google calendar sync, so I think it’s a safe bet that it comes with all Google apps. It just doesn’t pop up a box to tell you about it, like it does on the Mac.

I don’t really agree that something being free at point of distribution means users should just put up or shut up. Yeah, sure, in the end you can vote with your feet and have lost nothing, but dialogue between users and designers is what makes software good; if everyone just uninstalled free software at the first sign of something they disliked, it would remain eternally shit. People are also more likely to complain about Google because of their generally solid reputation. If Henry Potter the asshole in accounting gives you the stinkeye, you’re just going to shrug it off as HP being HP. It’s when your mum starts telling you you’re a bit of a dickbag that you start to worry. :slight_smile:

I agree completely and if the OP publicised (or sent an email with) a message along the lines of:

… then I would be completely and utterly on board.

Sure 'n all. Still, I do think installing memory-resident updaters is a properly dick move (the most notable other offenders are iTunes, Java and Acrobat - not great company to be in), so I think a little ranting can be forgiven when Goo-“don’t be evil”-gle get in on the act. What’s next, creating undeletable folders in the home folder? Installing search bars in Safari?

Pit is for rants, and I can get behind knocking a holier-than-thou software house for annoying paternalism. And I say this as someone who has happily signed over his life (okay, email, calendar, DNA) to Google.