The software_reporter_tool.exe is malware - admins need control back over this unwanted software.

There is NO replacement setting to disable this malware, NO administrator/IT professional focused or alternate method to package and install Chrome WITHOUT this malware,  and most of my customers do NOT use Google Apps (thank God!) and thus are not tied in to control browser behavior with Google Apps. Moreover, even for the one customer I have who DOES use Google Apps, the Google Apps support team has NO IDEA how to administer the behavior EITHER... and that's support the customer PAYS FOR!!! Nope, they sent me HERE for a solution and all i see is MULTIPLE LOCKED POSTS of people having THE SAME PROBLEM FOR YEARS!!!

This situation is ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE and as such the only solution I can see is to REMOVE Google Chrome as itself and set my AV solutions to treat the entire browser as MALWARE, since it acts in manners entirely consistent with malware: installing and running additional, unexpected applications as it chooses, which then DOMINATE compute resources, then send reports to Google, all without input OR control by the end user. Smells like an EU privacy violation as well... maybe another privacy violation lawsuit waiting to happen.

Only solution I see is to move to Edge (which does have rich policy control) or Brave as chromium compatible browser solutions WITHOUT additional MALWARE!

If there are new, super secret methods of disabling this unwanted behavior in Chrome, I'd love to know about it so I can at least regain CONTROL of the installed base of Chrome browsers until I can REPLACE them entirely!