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How does google pack knows what applications are installed on your system?

alt text http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/7548/googlepack.png

Shawn Mclean
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    They don't, unless you've already installed one of their spyware on your machine. – Gert Grenander Aug 07 '10 at 23:36
  • well, if u call chrome spyware, I have no idea what the google toolbar for firefox is doing there though. – Shawn Mclean Aug 07 '10 at 23:47
  • Chrome is a known spyware. It reported Google toolbar for my Firefox as well. Not sure if it's because of the search box. – Gert Grenander Aug 07 '10 at 23:49
  • @Greg G: I think it is because of the search box, that's all I have as well. But it's probably enough to report back. As you noted below, it gets no information from Opera. – David Aug 07 '10 at 23:53
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    I think they're bluffing. :-) It's "detecting" completely wrong on my system. It says I already have Firefox with Google toolbar, (I have Firefox without it), and it's offering to install Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth and Google Chrome, all of which I already have. Perhaps they can actually detect what you have if your browser runs Java, but I have Java disabled in the browser. – Marcelo Aug 08 '10 at 05:04

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It's just looking at the browser and OS information that the browser sends it in the User Agent, isn't it? Or is there something on there that lists out actual installed applications that I'm just not seeing?

David
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  • Is it doing this on another page off of the main page? All I see is a list of "software for my mac" that's available to download. Some of it is installed already, but not all of it. – David Aug 07 '10 at 23:33
  • Right under that, there should be a list of software already installed, i'll take a screen shot and edit my question. It also says windows 7 only. – Shawn Mclean Aug 07 '10 at 23:36
  • Ah, now I see it when I go there from Windows 7. The only thing it shows for me is the Firefox Google Toolbar, which I'm assuming is one of several applications they have that report back what's installed. – David Aug 07 '10 at 23:38
  • Ya, I would guess the Google Toolbar is telling the page. It may be more obfuscated than that, but that's about the gist of it. – David Aug 07 '10 at 23:40
  • It doesn't report anything when using Opera on PC. – Gert Grenander Aug 07 '10 at 23:50