Help with Terminal script

My iMac has recently started suffering a minor, but annoying, glitch which seems to be caused by Google Software Update, which seems to be an obligatory feature of any Google software, such as Google Chrome or Google Earth. It checks for software updates on Earth and Drive many times per day and each time this seems to trigger an automatic scan by my antivirus software. The annoying part is that the scan notification pops up and somehow this means that my computer is disabled for a few seconds and then I need to re-click on the application I was using in order to make it the "active" application once more. Not the most dreadful thing to have to put up with, but it is annoying in the same way that a mosquito is annoying.

Anyway, I hunted around a bit and found a page in Google support which seems to provide instructions that would allow me to set the update to occur, say, once a day, which would be fine. https://support.google.com/installer/answer/147176?h...

Trouble is, it involves writing some instructions in Terminal and they seem to have missed a vital part. It says:

In reference to support.google.com/installer/answer/147176?hl=en-GB:

To change how frequently Google Software Update checks for updates, execute the following in the Terminal application:

$ defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval
where is the elapsed time in seconds between update checks.

Can anyone tell me where I should insert the number of seconds?

In reply to a post by koru:

$ defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval
where is the elapsed time in seconds between update checks.

Can anyone tell me where I should insert the number of seconds?

At the end.
e.g.
defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 86400
(once every 24 hours)

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 604800
(once a week)

HTH, Simon

Thank you so much. By guesswork it was the most likely place, but I didn't want to rely on guesswork. Let's hope it works.

Your examples don't start with the $. Is that deliberate? That is, do you think I should not include the $?

The $ is the prompt symbol, like the ">" in DOS, the OS puts that at the start of the line.

You just type the command.

Doh!

Unfortunately, this script does not seem to have worked. Do I need to use sudo, maybe?

I gave up in the end, and simply uninstalled Google drive and Google Earth. Why they can't include a preferences setting to control how often the automatic updates take place is beyond me.

An alternative approach is to install Little Snitch. http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html This is an excellent tool that lets you know every time a service "phones home" and gives you to opportunity to block it, either "Until Quit" or "Forever".