Google runs a system-level update service on Windows too. The crash handler for it is also running all the time, at least on my machine (and is running with root-equivalent permissions). If you disable it, the next time you launch Chrome they just turn it back on.
> Google runs a system-level update service on Windows too. The crash handler for it is also running all the time, at least on my machine (and is running with root-equivalent permissions). If you disable it, the next time you launch Chrome they just turn it back on.
> It's bizarre. Few vendors do this.
Please correct me if I am wrong but Adobe Reader has something like this on Windows, right? And so does iTunes?
Even Apple and Adobe don't actively turn their update services back on when you run their applications if you have explicitly disabled them, though, at least not in any version of any of their software that I've come across.
In contrast, it appears that Google installs whatever updates it wants on your system and does turn the related services back on again if you turn them off. It really shouldn't be possible for software to leave that sort of access open without the user's/administrator's explicit consent, but unfortunately the worst offender on this issue is now Microsoft with Windows 10, so I don't hold out much hope that anything will be done about it on Windows platforms any time soon.
Sadly, this just seems to be the price of admission to the modern software world. You have what is effectively a permanent rootkit installed if you want to use the software at all, and even though that is self-evidently incompatible with a robust security and privacy model, when big enough players do it, people just accept it because they don't see that they have any choice.
> Even Apple and Adobe don't actively turn their update services back on when you run their applications if you have explicitly disabled them, though, at least not in any version of any of their software that I've come across.
You can explicitly disable their auto-update mechanisms in the UI, I'm not sure if that's the case for Chrome, but force-closing the GoogleCrashHandler process isn't really comparable to an explicit UI toggle.
Once you've got a culture where it's not your machine, it's just another sensor in Google's panopticon, the idea that Google should do this makes perfect sense.
It's bizarre. Few vendors do this.