Google Update Now a Scheduled Task, But Still Evil
Google has released a slight revision of its Google Update software for Windows. The latest version eliminates the need for Update to run constantly in the background — one of several reasons we’ve previously labeled the software “evil” — but stops short of conforming to the best practices of software updating.
Instead of running constantly in the background, consuming resources and creating a potential security vulnerability, Google Update now runs as a scheduled task.
Google Update has also been changed to allow some control over when it runs. The default is for Update to check with Google’s servers once an hour, but if you dig into the Windows Task Scheduler you can change that interval and even disable it altogether. However, according the Google Open Source Blog, tinkering with the update interval might cause Google Update to revert to its always-on status.
“When Google Update determines that the Windows Task Scheduler or Service mechanisms are not working as expected,” says the blog, “we have added in fallback mechanisms that cause Google Update to begin running as a continuous process again.”
So much for user control.
You might wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, what’s wrong with keeping your software up to date? Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with it, but Google’s Update software flies in the face of over 20 years of software best practices — there’s simply no need for desktop software to run update checks continuously, or even once an hour.
It’s not hard to see how Google views Update: it’s a way for it to have the constant update capabilities its web apps enjoy, but on your desktop. The problem is that while we accept that we can’t control the web, we most definitely can (and want to) control what happens on our laptops and PCs.
Or at least we could until Google decided we couldn’t.
The well-established practice of checking for updates when an application launches has been serving the industry — and some of its biggest names, like Adobe and Microsoft — well for for decades.
The latest version of Google Update is a baby-step in the right direction, but we still won’t be using Chrome, Google Earth or anything else that relies of Google Update until Google does the right thing.
The Mac version of Google update remains unchanged.
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