monline

Google's new video chat service requires you to install some stuff from the GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.dmg that is available from their website. Of course this not only installs the browser plugin(s), but an updater application too. The annoying thing is that they do not install the complete Google Updater, only some hidden daemon and agent application. But you've no control over this updater at all. It does not show up neither in Applications nor in System Preferences. What if somebody wanted to disable the automatic updates and run them manually once in a while? Unfortunately you've to tinker a little bit since you won't find any GUI allowing you to change anything.

Piers wrote a complete description on how to clean up the various Google Updater stuff on your Mac. However since we did not get a regular Google Updater install from this GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.dmg, we do not have to go all the way. You don't even have to rename all those plist files Piers suggested, just open the /Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist file and change the RunAtLoad parameter from true to false.

You can start the agent manually anytime later by launching the app at /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app. An easy way to do so is to run open /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app in a terminal. Of course it will not necessarily connect to Google's server right away ... it'll only do so if "it's time" (according to the time of the last check).