41–50 of 67 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They're going to want some sort of analysis And I want $1 billion dollars. Doesn’t mean someone’s going to give it to me.
Point is, nobody is going to be like "wow, chrome is eating up 4GB of my disk space? I totally trust it now!"
And Claude is hogging 12G for Cowork which I don’t want.
You can find more info here: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22543#issue...
Annoying, but are the kind of people still using Chrome really that discerning about what's going on behind the scenes on their device?
“Still using” the most popular browser in the market by an absolutely huge margin? Yeah, there are a few.
> "Still using” the most popular browser in the market by an absolutely huge margin?
The strawman derail notwithstanding, the answer is no. No they do not.
> When a user downloads or updates Chrome, Gemini Nano is downloaded on demand to ensure Chrome downloads the correct model for the user's hardware. The initial model download is triggered by the first call to a *.create() function (for example, Summarizer.create()) of any built-in AI API that depends on Gemini Nano.
This sounds like it could be possible that some part of Chrome, or perhaps a privileged website (ie; google.com), could be invoking `*.create()` 100% of the time? I don't actually know that this is what's going on or even if it's likely mind you.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/understand-built-in-mod...
It is also quite ironic that one of the docs pages is titled "Inform users of model download" although it goes on to talk about notifying in terms of model download time, not necessarily getting user consent:
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/inform-users-of-model-d...
The local model powers the features nobody uses. The cloud model powers the feature everyone sees. You pay 4GB for the illusion of privacy.
>You pay 4GB for the illusion of privacy. How's this conspiracy supposed to work? A technical audience who cares about privacy aren't going to be placated by 4GB sitting on their disk. They're going to want some sort of analysis (like http interception), or probably not use chrome in the first place. A non-technical audience isn't going to make the association between 4GB of disk usage and the privacy implications.
Natural Conclusion: when I use all the promoted AI features in chrome it's using the local AI model. This is not true; Google is being intentionally misleading.
4GB should be nothing. It's crazy to me how consumer computer storage has stalled out at the 2010 level for so long. And if anything we're going backwards now in 2026. We should be having many TBs in our home computers and laptops. Instead most users are still stuck with 256GB and trying to tetris around to fit even their average amount of small data.
This was mostly an Apple problem. 1TB SSDs were dirt cheap until the last 6 months when AI bought them all up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You pay 4GB for the illusion of privacy. How's this conspiracy supposed to work? A technical audience who cares about privacy aren't going to be placated by 4GB sitting on their disk. They're going to want some sort of analysis (like http interception), or probably not use chrome in the first place. A non-technical audience isn't going to make the association between 4GB of disk usage and the privacy implications.
1. I've got a Chrome local model stored on my drive 2. I see a heavily promoted "AI search" box in chrome Natural Conclusion: when I use all the promoted AI features in chrome it's using the local AI model. This is not true; Google is being intentionally misleading.
4GB should be nothing. It's crazy to me how consumer computer storage has stalled out at the 2010 level for so long. And if anything we're going backwards now in 2026. We should be having many TBs in our home computers and laptops. Instead most users are still stuck with 256GB and trying to tetris around to fit even their average amount of small data.
Ironically, the AI datacenter boom is also buying up all the storage.