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.
Just because the software is running on your device doesn’t mean it can’t phone home. You might not care about your local storage but 8GB is pretty steep for some of us.
Not to mention the performance impact of actually running the thing.
Downloading 4 GB of data without your consent is a pretty big issue. If you’re on a bandwidth starved or data capped network, that becomes a huge problem. Wasting 4GB of space on this nonsense that users aren’t gonna use too is pretty absurd.
this makes zero sense because it’s on device, it’s no difference than the damage that just owning a phone is costing, are people here special?
I swear people just want a reason to freak out. Atleast make sense if you’re going to post such a stupid article title.
Just because the software is running on your device doesn’t mean it can’t phone home. You might not care about your local storage but 8GB is pretty steep for some of us.
Not to mention the performance impact of actually running the thing.
Downloading 4 GB of data without your consent is a pretty big issue. If you’re on a bandwidth starved or data capped network, that becomes a huge problem. Wasting 4GB of space on this nonsense that users aren’t gonna use too is pretty absurd.