[Richard Kimball]

Hey guys. You're the most tech savvy guys I know. The agreement (forgot to take a screen capture of it before deleting) sounded like it was telling me the updater would stay resident on my computer and run in the background. It also didn't give me an option to use Google Earth 5.0 beta without the autoupdater.

Am I overreacting? I just don't like the idea of giving Google carte blanche to run on my computer and install whatever updates it feels like installing.

[rockrr]

I use ZoneAlarm as my laptop firewall and every time a new program runs for the first time and tries to access the Internet ZoneAlarm pops up and seeks permission. On almost all of these programs I just deny it.

Google can run its program to its hearts content - it just can’t communicate with its host site. This doesn’t affect functionality of the app at all - just won’t let it update...