I DL'd GoogleEarth the other day and it (of course) installed Chrome w/o my consent. Didn't think much of it as I just use FF and was going to uninstall Chrome when I got around to it.

But then just tonight I happened to be messing around in my task manager, and I saw a program called stij.exe that I didn't recognize. I did a quick search and the first 10 returns were from generic virus-removal www sites like deletemalware.com; removepcthreat.com; malware-removal.com, etc., which of course are just front-ends to prey and scam unsuspecting people into installing their "free" software, but it still made me wary.

Thinking it was a legitimate virus, I ran an AVG scan with no results, so I ended up DL'ing 3-4 different virus/malware scanners, still with no results.

Then I continued my search and found that the file is actually considered "safe", and that it was installed with a program called SweetPacks, which is installed automatically with Chrome. After searching more about this SweetPacks program, it's very intrusive and changes settings w/o asking permissions, hijacks all web browsers and defaults to their homepage and search results, and overall can make internet browsing hell and make systems unstable and slow.

Now I have to go thru a 10+-step process to remove it completely as everything has to be done manually, or it will just come back the next time you reboot.

How does Google get away with this? Do they want to loose customers? because they just lost my respect/business.

Sorry for the rant, just couldn't believe what I found and thought I'd share. My advice - DON'T USE GOOGLE CHROME!


edit: I just saw that others with the same issue have used a direct installer instead of a bundled one, which doesn't install the sweetpacks malware. Still, very poor marketing practice on Google's part IMO; I still don't trust them

I have Chrome and that file isn't on my system.

sorry, just edited post. a direct link to the chrome_installer shouldn't have the malware included

I thought Chrome was the malware.

i dont have that file on my system...