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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

thatprivacyguy.com

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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#361

Post by semiquaver »

x3ro wrote: post #276
TheServitor wrote: post #23

Framing 4GB of data moving in a world of petabytes of traffic as a specific environmental disaster is kind of a stretch, regardless of whether we want the model.

Chrome is used by about 3.8 billion people [1]. So, if this is rolled out to every chrome user over the next year or two, this would generate about 15 Exabytes of traffic. It's difficult to find accurate, useful numbers on this, but lets assume 29 grams of CO2e per GB, this would be about 450k tons of CO2e. This in turn, equates to average household CO2 expenditure of almost 300k households. So make your own judgemen…

Traffic is not homogeneous in total transfer cost. CDN-hosted data at the edge, close to the user is much cheaper than data that has to transit many hops. At the asymptote, transferring data between machines on the LAN is essentially free.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#362

Post by azangru »

dotcoma wrote: post #10

Why use a browser from Google or Microsoft in 2026? Why in the world?

> Why use a browser from Google or Microsoft in 2026? Why in the world?

There are only three major browser rendering engines. One is Gecko, by Mozilla. One is Webkit, currently tended to by Apple. And one is Blink, which is Google/Microsoft. Of those, Blink is the most featureful. That's why.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#363

Post by altcognito »

x3ro wrote: post #276
TheServitor wrote: post #23

Framing 4GB of data moving in a world of petabytes of traffic as a specific environmental disaster is kind of a stretch, regardless of whether we want the model.

Chrome is used by about 3.8 billion people [1]. So, if this is rolled out to every chrome user over the next year or two, this would generate about 15 Exabytes of traffic. It's difficult to find accurate, useful numbers on this, but lets assume 29 grams of CO2e per GB, this would be about 450k tons of CO2e. This in turn, equates to average household CO2 expenditure of almost 300k households. So make your own judgemen…

> but lets assume 29 grams of CO2e per GB

29 grams for something that takes most folks less than 20 seconds to download? How many watts (neglecting the machinery was going to be running regardless of whether you are transferring something!) do you think it takes to transfer data?

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

Coal, the absolute worst of all, represents 18 grams over 60 full seconds to produce 1000 watts of power.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#364

Post by gchamonlive »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #322
wuschel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it? What is the on-board model used for?

I ran a fairly large production test of this and on _every_ measure except for privacy it was worse than a free tier server hosted LLM. Not happy about that as I would like to see more local models but that's the current state of things. https://sendcheckit.com/blog/ai-powered-subject-line-alterna...

> on _every_ measure except for privacy it was worse than a free tier server hosted LLM

Would you be able to compare this to other local models in it's class and a above that would fit consumer-grade hardware?

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#365

Post by mat_epice »

semiquaver wrote: post #357

[flagged]

Sounds like you've jumped to conclusions without reading the whole thing, or are making a disingenuous connection between two very different concepts. Climate impacts (really just energy waste) and "legal" arguments are different parts of this article. The legal part centers around whether they have permission to install this model along with Chrome, and whether they are using deceptive practices related to the model.

"Article 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC (the ePrivacy Directive) prohibits the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user, without the user's prior, freely-given, specific, informed, and unambiguous consent, except where strictly necessary for the provision of an information-society service explicitly requested by the user..."

That is not about climate.

The article goes on to say that there would not be a legal issue if Google simply asked, documented, not taken initial action without user approval, allow deletion, etc. Also not about climate.

What they do imply is that Google's being dishonest if they say that they are carbon neutral (as is often said in their Environmental, Social, and Governance reports) while imposing up to 250 GWh of power use on network providers and end users. I can see the concern.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#366

Post by graynk »

While I find the issue at hand extremely annoying and in poor taste (and this is not news - this was known in advance) - the same applies to the blog. This annoying clickbaity SEO slop of a blog seems to exist only to advertise their consultation services.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#367

Post by reactordev »

imglorp wrote: post #303
2ndorderthought wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a very good small model to be honest. That said, you might be surprised to learn that some of the models from 3b-9b could probably replace 80% of the things nonvibe coders use chatgpt for. Its a good idea to run small models locally if your computer can host them for privacy and cash saving reasons. But how can you trust Google to autoinstall one on your machine in 2026? I just couldn't do it.

Sure, local models good and yes, there's no way we can trust Google. We can be positive the entire motivation of Chrome is user behavior surveillance. There's not a nano-chance in all the multiverses that Chrome model is doing anything privately. They've gone to extraordinary length to accomplish this. It's not for free.

It is entirely about user surveillance as well as pushing their product on to their users because they have the install base. Google Chrome has become Microsoft IE6 in hostile user behavior.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#368

Post by delecti »

bell-cot wrote: post #264
jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what runs my PC. Tech companies just don't understand consent.

> ... don't understand consent. The word you're looking for is "respect". They understand consent, the same as JBS* understands animal rights. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_N.V .

For anyone else wondering why that link doesn't work, the hacker news formatting is dropping the final period. Add it back in and the link works.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#369

Post by lkramer »

wolvoleo wrote: post #255
toyg wrote: post #234

How hard would have been to add a simple message, warning people about it and offering to opt out? Most would have clicked OK without reading anyway, and Google could pretend they give a shit about users. Unless they expected blowback, and that kind of message is the "compromise" they want to eventually land on.

They don't want you to opt out. Then they can't brag to the shareholders about Chrome being "AI Powered" You're not even the customer when it comes to Google.

at this point you're barely the product either. You're more a passive platform for them to execute their strategy on.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#370

Post by maleldil »

jimbob45 wrote: post #63
dotcoma wrote: post #10

Why use a browser from Google or Microsoft in 2026? Why in the world?

What are the alternatives? Only a massively moneyed corp has the resources to fight vulns at acceptable rates. Firefox doesn’t count because they’re being funded by Google.

> Firefox doesn’t count because they’re being funded by Google.

Even if that were true, it's still a better option _today_.

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