Google Desktop For Mac Reviewed

John Gruber, who runs a fantastic site, Daring Fireball, has an interesting post that dissects the install for the Google Desktop application. This application was released yesterday. More often than naught a software package makes changes that were not exactly as advertised. John takes the time to figure out what the application is up to. Here’s a snippet from the post:

Google Updater does its thing by downloading and installing software via standard .pkg installer packages, which means they leave behind BOM (“bill of material”) receipts in /Library/Receipts/, and so you can inspect them with the lsbom tool to see what was installed where. That doesn’t do you any good before you run Google Updater, though.

*/Applications/ — Two apps are installed here, Google Desktop.app and Google Updater.app. Google Desktop.app is the software that shows you the sort of Quicksilver-ish query and results window when you tap Command-Command to invoke Google Desktop.1

*/Library/InputManagers/GoogleModLoader/ — Uh-oh. Google Desktop installs an input manager hack in the local domain Library folder. That means it is installed for all users on the machine, and injects code into every Cocoa application you launch. Google Updater does not give you the option to install such files in your per-user Library folder.

A discussion of why input managers are suspect is beyond the scope of this article. Matt Neuburg’s “Are Input Managers the Work of the Devil?” TidBits article is a good introduction and overview. Also relevant, especially with regard to installing these things silently, is my own piece on Smart Crash Reports.

* /Library/Application Support/Google/ — Two things here. One is a second app bundle named “Google Updater.app”. I’m not sure what the difference is, but the Google Updater.app in the /Applications/ folder weighs just 108 KB, the one here in /Library/Application Support/Google/ weighs 2.8 MB. My guess is that this is the real updater app, and the one in /Applications/ is just a springboard that launches this app.

Please read the full posting over on John’s site.

Article Link

UPDATE: Starting to really love the Techmeme crew. Welcome!

[tags]Google Dekstop, Mac, Google, Daring Fireball[/tags]