Ask HN: Anyone else seeing Google Apps. install themselves?
It appears that Google is using the Chrome web browser to install other applications. On OS X El Capitan I've found Google Search is now installed as a seperate application, or at least I now have a random link added in Launchpad.
http://www.cio.com/article/2993065/os-x/os-x-el-capitan-remove-unwanted-google-chrome-apps-from-launchpad.html
Comments
In my instance it seemed to just be a LaunchPad link added to 'Users\[my user]\Applications\'.
Easy enough to remove but still worrying that Google thinks this is okay behaviour.
I installed Chrome in ~/Applications and saw what you are talking about. I believe they are really just shortcuts for Chrome for various Google services. I deleted them and haven't seen them since.