Google behaviour?

[mongers]

One pc is windows 7 and has to have chrome browser on it to play some drm'ed films/streams.  The upshot of this is that whenever I resume from hibernation the pc runs a googleupdate process, this despite the browser not being opened and all google process having been stopped in msconfig etc.

So how exactly do I find the 'switch' to kill this annoying behaviour.

2nd 'problem' is a different computer that sometimes runs google Picassa photo program.
Again all google services and processes have been disabled, yet sometime when I put in a camera sd card to move over photos, a google app pre-emptively takes over the control of the card and tries to manage any file transfers itself.  Any ideas on how to kill this annoyance.

Two minor issues, but makes one wonder what else google tries to get up to behind our backs?   

[viper37]

One pc is windows 7 and has to have chrome browser on it to play some drm'ed films/streams.  The upshot of this is that whenever I resume from hibernation the pc runs a googleupdate process, this despite the browser not being opened and all google process having been stopped in msconfig etc.

So how exactly do I find the 'switch' to kill this annoying behaviour.

Well, you kinda need all the updates for Google Chrome, so I'd let it run...

I believe you can play DRM content on Firefox now:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm

Alternativey, there is Chromium, the open source browser on wich Chrome (and others, like Vivaldi) is based.

2nd 'problem' is a different computer that sometimes runs google Picassa photo program.
Again all google services and processes have been disabled, yet sometime when I put in a camera sd card to move over photos, a google app pre-emptively takes over the control of the card and tries to manage any file transfers itself.  Any ideas on how to kill this annoyance.

Can't help you here, sorry.
But there are other softwares besides Picassa which you can use, especially since it's a dead software (and so is Win 7, btw)
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/03/picasa-is-dead-here-are-5-alternatives-for-online.html

Two minor issues, but makes one wonder what else google tries to get up to behind our backs?   

a lot.   

[mongers]

One pc is windows 7 and has to have chrome browser on it to play some drm'ed films/streams.  The upshot of this is that whenever I resume from hibernation the pc runs a googleupdate process, this despite the browser not being opened and all google process having been stopped in msconfig etc.

So how exactly do I find the 'switch' to kill this annoying behaviour.

Well, you kinda need all the updates for Google Chrome, so I'd let it run...

I believe you can play DRM content on Firefox now:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm

Alternativey, there is Chromium, the open source browser on wich Chrome (and others, like Vivaldi) is based.

2nd 'problem' is a different computer that sometimes runs google Picassa photo program.
Again all google services and processes have been disabled, yet sometime when I put in a camera sd card to move over photos, a google app pre-emptively takes over the control of the card and tries to manage any file transfers itself.  Any ideas on how to kill this annoyance.

Can't help you here, sorry.
But there are other softwares besides Picassa which you can use, especially since it's a dead software (and so is Win 7, btw)
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/03/picasa-is-dead-here-are-5-alternatives-for-online.html

Two minor issues, but makes one wonder what else google tries to get up to behind our backs?   

a lot.   

Thanks for the reply Viper, I'll look into those.

Yes Chronium looks interest, I had thought about getting Vivaldi, had tried an early version of it a while back.

[viper37]

Vivaldi works great, but I was unsure if it would work properly with DRM under Win7. 

But give it a try, it's a nice little browser.  Less features than Firefox, but it's getting there.