Identity Crisis For Google Software

Google Video Player has been updated to version 1.1. The improvements are: support for DirectX, true frame-by-frame display and some rendering optimizations.

There is also a funny bug in the installer. If you rename GoogleVideoPlayerSetup.exe to GoogleVideoPlayer.exe, and run the setup, it will give you an error: "Google Video Player is running. Please close it to continue." even if the player isn't started. That only means one thing: the setup checks if there's a file called GoogleVideoPlayer.exe running (that's the name of the Google Video Player main exe). It checks for the file, and the file found is exactly the installer. That's a really dumb way to check if the player is running. I'm sure Googlers have heard about mutexes (even InnoSetup supports that). You can even rename ANY executable to GoogleVideoPlayer.exe and try to run the setup. The same error message.

That reminds me of another error message from Google Desktop. I had a version downloaded from 11 March, I downloaded the latest version when Desktop got out of beta (on 15 March) and I couldn't install it: "A newer version of Google Desktop is already installed." It's also interesting to note that, although, Google Desktop reached version 3, the software presents itself as "Google Desktop 4.2006.306.1208-en".

Related:
Google Video Store is live
Google Desktop Should Reinvent Itself For Vista