Dubious Google program that WILL NOT DIE

[frogcurry]

I just installed iTunes on my PC as I now have an iPod, and so I was doing a clean-up to kill all the services and crap (i.e. Bonjour, Quicktime) that it sprayed like piss all over my start-up files. In the process I also looked for other unknown programs on start-up, and come across a program called

C:\Program Files\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe

which I've not seen before.

Now I do have Google earth and the Google plug-in, but no other Google tools (i.e. no toolbar or anything like that). So I assume its associated with them. So I try uninstalling both and restarting. No dice, its still there.

Defender won't let me kill it (from the startup list or while running), so I try using msconfig to remove it from the start-up service list. msconfig claims that its stopped and gone from the start-up program list, but: lo and behold after a restart its still bloody there. And msconfig still thinks its gone.

Process Explorer claims that it runs under the same "svchost.exe" as the Windows Update does. hijackthis.de says that its OK when I tested that. All my AV and spyware programs just shrug and say alls OK. Soooo....it probably isn't spyware pretending to be a Google program, but an actual genuine product of the evil G Empire.

Does anyone know WTF this program is and if it is maybe actually doing something useful (maybe related to the search toolbar in Firefox)? Or is it deletion time?

[General Zod]

10 seconds of Googling turns up this. http://antivirus.about.com/od/windowsba ... update.htm

From Google's own website - http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bi ... wer=107253

[Argosh]

Wow, I have that too. Must be leftovers from Chrome installation.

[frogcurry]

My brain must have been fried, Googling it slipped my mind. Meh, it seems to have removed itself at some point since I originally posted. Not too happy about them locking a service in a running state despite my attempts to stop it though.