I was working away on my Mac a few days ago when I went to my Launchpad which is a quick way on OS X to launch apps to start an app and I found this icon which I circled for you:
There was this Google Search icon in Launchpad. The problem was that I’ve never installed it. So I was left wondering how it got there. Now I do have a copy of Google Chrome and I assumed at first that this was part it. So I went though the options of Chrome and found nothing that referred to Google Search. That was weird and what was weirder was that I went through my applications folder and didn’t find a Google Search application either. This was now becoming more concerning. So I decided to take a chance and click on the icon and see what happened. It popped open Chrome and opened it to Google.com. Thus my original hypothesis was correct. This had somehow appeared as part of Google Chrome.You see, Chrome has the ability to update itself, even when Chrome isn’t running. So I have to assume that this was just dumped onto my Mac without my permission during one of those updates. Gee, that really gives me the warm fuzzies about Google. What’s even made my opinion of Google even worse is the fact that when I tried to delete the icon by pressing on an icon in Launchpad and holding it until all the icons started to shake, it wouldn’t let me delete it.
WTF?
Fortunately, there is a way to get rid of this icon:
- Go to your user (home) folder.
- Click on Applications.
- Right-click on the Chrome Apps folder and send it to the trash.
- Empty your trash
The fact that the folder in question is named “Chrome Apps” implies that there’s potentially other stuff that could have been downloaded to my Mac in this manner. Lovely.
This method will get rid of the Google Search icon, and normally this is the part where I would say that you should declare victory and have a beer. But the icon comes back every time Chrome updates itself. Because that’s what it did when Google Chrome updated itself a week or so ago. Thus if you want to never see this icon again, you need to dump Chrome too. Then you can declare victory and have a beer.
Why am I so ticked at this? If Google asked me if they could install this, I would have said no of course, but at least they would have asked me. Or, if Google Chrome had a setting to turn off this behavior, I’d be fine with that too as I would have choice. But they did neither. The fact that the company who claims to “do no evil” shoves this stuff on my Mac without my permission qualifies as being pretty evil to me. Thus I am writing this story to let others know the sort of stupidity that Google does, and how they can deal with it which is to remove it from their Macs. Plus I hope it makes people think twice about using Google’s products and services. Perhaps then they will respect the rights of the users of their products.
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This entry was posted on November 7, 2015 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Google Search On My Mac??? How’d That Get There Without My Permission???
I was working away on my Mac a few days ago when I went to my Launchpad which is a quick way on OS X to launch apps to start an app and I found this icon which I circled for you:
There was this Google Search icon in Launchpad. The problem was that I’ve never installed it. So I was left wondering how it got there. Now I do have a copy of Google Chrome and I assumed at first that this was part it. So I went though the options of Chrome and found nothing that referred to Google Search. That was weird and what was weirder was that I went through my applications folder and didn’t find a Google Search application either. This was now becoming more concerning. So I decided to take a chance and click on the icon and see what happened. It popped open Chrome and opened it to Google.com. Thus my original hypothesis was correct. This had somehow appeared as part of Google Chrome.You see, Chrome has the ability to update itself, even when Chrome isn’t running. So I have to assume that this was just dumped onto my Mac without my permission during one of those updates. Gee, that really gives me the warm fuzzies about Google. What’s even made my opinion of Google even worse is the fact that when I tried to delete the icon by pressing on an icon in Launchpad and holding it until all the icons started to shake, it wouldn’t let me delete it.
WTF?
Fortunately, there is a way to get rid of this icon:
The fact that the folder in question is named “Chrome Apps” implies that there’s potentially other stuff that could have been downloaded to my Mac in this manner. Lovely.
This method will get rid of the Google Search icon, and normally this is the part where I would say that you should declare victory and have a beer. But the icon comes back every time Chrome updates itself. Because that’s what it did when Google Chrome updated itself a week or so ago. Thus if you want to never see this icon again, you need to dump Chrome too. Then you can declare victory and have a beer.
Why am I so ticked at this? If Google asked me if they could install this, I would have said no of course, but at least they would have asked me. Or, if Google Chrome had a setting to turn off this behavior, I’d be fine with that too as I would have choice. But they did neither. The fact that the company who claims to “do no evil” shoves this stuff on my Mac without my permission qualifies as being pretty evil to me. Thus I am writing this story to let others know the sort of stupidity that Google does, and how they can deal with it which is to remove it from their Macs. Plus I hope it makes people think twice about using Google’s products and services. Perhaps then they will respect the rights of the users of their products.
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This entry was posted on November 7, 2015 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.