Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.
If you read the article it will summarize very succinctly everything wrong with it. It is illegal for a variety of reasons in some places (Europe, California) it’s wasteful, it means 4 fucking GB of data unrequested which can be a problem in metered connections in many places. 4GB. This model is not essential for chrome to function as a browser at all, and in all likelihood unless you use it for generating text then you probably are not even using it.
If you read the article it will summarize very succinctly everything wrong with it. It is illegal for a variety of reasons in some places (Europe, California) it’s wasteful, it means 4 fucking GB of data unrequested which can be a problem in metered connections in many places. 4GB. This model is not essential for chrome to function as a browser at all, and in all likelihood unless you use it for generating text then you probably are not even using it.