Had installed Google Gears on my system (WinXP)just to check out the general functionality especially with regards to Google Reader, and decided that it wasn't something I wanted to keep. After uninstalling it via the Add/Remove Program dialog and rebooting, I found my firewall flashing messages to me saying that googleupdate.exe was trying to connect out. Thinking that I had somehow uninstalled wrongly, I reinstalled Google Gears, and uninstalled it again. This time, I found two instances of googleupdate.exe running via Task Manager, and that they were running as system services.

Now, although I am somewhat proficient with computers and software, I'm not a programmer or system administrator (somewhat-noob alert) so it took quite a bit of searching on the web before I figured out how to disable the google update service(s) via msconfig, and to remove them complete via regedit. I realize that googleupdate.exe may be a benign service, and that my system won't necessarily suffer if I keep it on my system, but I seriously dislike software that silently installs itself on my PC, and refuses to uninstall itself when I want it to.

So, my questions are:

1. Why did googleupdate.exe / googleupdater not uninstall itself when Google Gears was uninstalled? Is it because it's also part of Google Desktop (which I don't have)? 2. If googleupdate.exe was meant as a separate functionality (from Google Gears) , why was there no option to uninstall googleupdate itself in Add / Remove Program dialog? 3. What is the purpose of not uninstalling googleupdate.exe after Google Gears has been uninstalled? I mean, what is there to update after the main software (google gears) has been removed? 4. Since there is not provision to uninstall googleupdate.exe, does uninstalling / reinstalling google gears create more instances of googleupdate windows services?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Cheers