Why does this process keep running?

[gigabit]

Hello. I recently installed Little Snitch on my Mac and I immediately noticed a process by the name of GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent constantly trying to connect to Google's servers. The process is located in the following location:

/Users/me/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent

I know I could easily delete the file, but first I'm more interested in finding out exactly what mechanism is allowing this process to be run periodically. I checked the login items for my account, /Library/StartupItems/, and /System/Library/StartupItems/ and there's nothing there. So how does this thing keep starting itself?

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

 

[angelwatt]

It's usually there because you installed Google Desktop / Earth / etc. I got rid of Google Desktop because that dang thing kept getting started. Don't expect it to be easy to get rid of. It has a habit of recreating itself.

 

[larkost]

This is run by a per-user launchagent so in:

~/Library/LaunchAgents

If you delete it it will be re-created the first time you use any of the Google applications that it updates. I have feed-back to Google that not being able to disable this is a really bad idea, and will prevent their software from being run in computer labs.

 

[gigabit]

What do you know, there it is! Thanks... I didn't even know about the LaunchAgents folder until now. Good to know. Thanks again.