Re:It's my computer (Score 1)

That's basically my opinion as-well. I really like many Google products, and the *only* reason that I don't have Google Earth, Chrome, and Gears, is because of the forced updater thingy.

I was also very excited to become a serious Gears developer and supporter.. which obviously can't happen now since I don't have Gears installed..

Note that I have no problem with what is now being the default - what I care about is that there's an installation option to specify what to install, and when to do updates (such as manually). Both Adobe Reader and Java are just like this - by default they have auto-update, but you can install them without it using a little knowledge. That's cool with me.

One day I might try some of the 'hacks' such as registry/folder permissions, but for now Google and I just differ too much in opinion for a relationship beyond Gmail :'-(