Rant: Google screwed up with Google Toolbar 4 auto-update (mild language warning)

[12Wonder]

Google played a very nasty trick on me yesterday. They did a drive-by automatic update of my beloved Google Toolbar from v. 3 to 4.

Well let me just say Google Toolbar 4 sucks. I'm trying to keep it clean here so I won't let loose with what I REALLY think of it.

I suddenly found myself unable to have more than 3 or 4 browser windows open at a time without IE crashing. I'm used to keeping at least 15-18 open without so much as a hiccup. And the problem wasn't restricted to browsers. The new Google 4 toolbar screwed things up so royally that programs that normally played together just fine (notably Outlook, IE, and Dreamweaver), now continually froze, refusing to respond and forcing reboots. Right-click context menus disappeared. Pages loaded half-blank. Typing was impossible; no text showed up.

Further, Google removed some features like dropdown history, and made other features not as user-friendly, or even simply incompatible with IE 6 or 7. I won't go into detail; the bugs are too numerous to list. You can read all about them here: Google Toolbar Bugs

I happened to still have a copy of my old Google Toolbar 3, so I closed all browser windows, then went to Start -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs and uninstalled the Google Toolbar. Then I installed v. 3.

Problem: Google admits that EVERYONE with a Google toolbar gets auto-updates forced on them eventually. This is a very quiet procedure without any notification whatsoever to the user. Why any company that claims to be so user-friendly would force unwanted, buggy updates, effectively ****ing people off and completely alienating them, is beyond me. IMO Google is getting just a little too big for their boots. It's the masses who made them a success. Now Google thinks THEY know what's best for the masses?

Anyway, I found what seems to be a solution for preventing autoupdates of the Google Toolbar. WARNING: I offer this URL only for the desperate. It is not for the timid. I have heard about this solution breaking things if done improperly. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. I will NOT come over and fix your computer, nor offer any other kind of support, if you screw it up.

Otherwise, just uninstall the d*** thing and find a different/better toolbar altogether. Sorry, I have no better suggestions at this point.

Anne

[12Wonder]

Originally Posted by 12Wonder

Anyway, I found what seems to be a solution for preventing autoupdates of the Google Toolbar.

Update - I have found that the above does NOT prevent auto updates of the Google Toolbar, after all.

BTW, Google Desktop is even worse. Google Desktop self-installed on a few computers here during Java updates, resulting in sudden and dramatically dead-slow performance. As soon as all Google elements -- Google Desktop, Google Toolbar, etc. -- were completely uninstalled and all related registry entries deleted, the pc's sped up to their usual fast performance again.