Live data from Hacker News

Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

old.reddit.com

151–160 of 261 posts

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#151

I know that I'm in a bit of a bubble with this one, but I am surprised there is still anyone using Chrome instead of Brave. I get the dependency on Gmail other Google-specific tools, but the built-in ad blocking and Google-free aspects of it made me switch instantly and haven't look back after years.

[flagged]

This one: http://brave.com/

I don't use their browser but I like their search engine!

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#152
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some things only work in Chrome. It's a fact. It's terrible. We're the frogs being boiled, over the last decade. People sounded the alarms, but they were looked at like they had tin foil on their heads. Now, it's clear they were right. I'm speaking generally, of course. I use Firefox for all my personal stuff, except for those situations where it doesn't work.

>> Because some things only work in Chrome. What things? Looks like an urban myth.

ups.com is one that really infuriates me. It shows 404s for me on Firefox and works perfectly on Chrome.

Kaiser's website works mostly on Firefox. Recently I had to print a "letter" and on Firefox it was blank and printed fine with Chrome.

I don't know if it's still this way, but Google Meet didn't work very well in Firefox, so last year I took all my meetings in Chrome.

These are just what I remember. There are a LOT more.

EDIT: on the UPS thing... it happens when I follow links from gmail in Firefox. Sometimes it wouldn't 404, but I'd see a "..." and it would just stay that way.

EDIT2: for a long time (not anymore), sending Kaiser emails was broken. Hitting enter would warp to the bottom on the page and I'd have to scroll back up to finish typing. They're completely redesigned the website recently and that bug is fixed.

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#153
post #67

I know that I'm in a bit of a bubble with this one, but I am surprised there is still anyone using Chrome instead of Brave. I get the dependency on Gmail other Google-specific tools, but the built-in ad blocking and Google-free aspects of it made me switch instantly and haven't look back after years.

I use Safari personally. It’s good.

Me too. I don't get the complaints.

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#154

It seems to me that adding AI to desktop apps and sending the data back to the mothership for processing is an amazing way to collect data from people who, for the most part, would be completely unaware it's even happening. Heck, most of them think the Internet is Chrome.

You mean that chrome is an internet explorer?

Something no one else would want - a little colored dot next to HN user names keyed to their generation, so I could quickly tell why none of the commenter mentioned AOL.

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#157

This seems somewhat specious - it's also quite possible that they just altered the wording to make it less verbose. Does anyone have access to the link "Learn more about on-device AI"? If Chrome starts sending data from the browser back to Google, that's going to be a huge compliance issue. If you work for a company that processes customer data in the browser, you're going to need to ban Chrome.

Chrome has been doing that since the beginning.

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#158

It seems to me that adding AI to desktop apps and sending the data back to the mothership for processing is an amazing way to collect data from people who, for the most part, would be completely unaware it's even happening. Heck, most of them think the Internet is Chrome.

I'm just not sure how this gives me control of my information, whether I want it sent or not to Google, and if they're retaining it for training or not.

That last question I don't even want to ask because the first two doesn't seem clear.

This could be simply fixed by adding the feature, and defaulting it off, and letting people learn about it and enable it.

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#159

This seems somewhat specious - it's also quite possible that they just altered the wording to make it less verbose. Does anyone have access to the link "Learn more about on-device AI"? If Chrome starts sending data from the browser back to Google, that's going to be a huge compliance issue. If you work for a company that processes customer data in the browser, you're going to need to ban Chrome.

Chrome has been recording metadata (URLs, timestamps, etc) about your activity since forever, and you can turn this off if you like, see https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity.

They don't record data (POSTs etc).

Re: Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

#160

For someone with more knowledge than me: How does this affect other Chromium based browsers? I did some web searches and see Brave has its own AI thing “Leo” that is intended to preserve privacy. But I don’t think that is on device. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I use Firefox myself but have family and friends who use various Chromium based browsers. Thank you.

Chromium mostly does not support this, because it doesn't have the binary blob required to run the inference. However, it does still download the model weights and expose the LanguageModel API, because that part is hooked up.

https://adsm.dev/posts/prompt-api/#which-browsers-support-th...

Packagers might eventually disable that but I tested this behaviour in chromium 148 a few hours ago, and it would download the weights but has trouble running them.

Post reply on HN