MS Outlook Social Connector update - but I don't have Outlook?

I just installed Office 2010 on the netbook in my sig. I got Professional Plus, but only installed Word, Powerpoint, Excel and OneNote (I didn't waste a ton of money for no reason - I got it all for $10 for being in the US Army) and I went to MS Update today to check for patches and updates. It had the usual stuff I'd expect, but it also installed something called "Update for Outlook Social Connector KB2289116" - but I don't have Outlook, or any other mail client, installed.

Any ideas what the hell happened?

 

I think that is standard/expected behavior; nothing went wrong or is broken. The same thing happened to me with Office 2010 (Standard) even though I don't have Outlook installed. I noticed it has installed updates for OneNote, which I don't have installed either. I have had similar experiences with Office 2007 and Office 2003 as well. It would install updates for applications I didn't have installed, such as Access, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, etc. I think Windows Update just checks to see what version of Office you have installed and downloads/installs updates for all applications that version of Office has, regardless if they are installed or not. I'm guessing it does this in case they are installed later, so you can be up-to-date.

 

codester pretty much spot on there... And if it really bothers you, you can just right click > hide update.