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

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

#941

Post by goatlover »

andrewmutz wrote: post #754
Razengan wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of > You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bund…

The story is only trending because it’s an AI model and the internet is anti-ai right now. It’s a double standard. It’s like how people are outraged that electricity is being used in data centers to power AI models. When you do the math, the power consumption is far, far less than all the other things you do all day without thinking twice. But again, anti-AI double standard

It certainly makes me uncomfortable given the current capabilities of AI and what the tech CEOs have said about what they see AI becoming. It's not just like any other feature. Am considering uninstalling and no longer using Chrome on principle now.

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

#942

Post by heyamitkmr »

bean469 wrote: post #824
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #783

I stopped using chrome 15 years ago and de-googled my life 5 years ago. The hardest thing to let go in fact was Gmaps (most alternatives, until recently, were not great) and I'm still captured by android, but rome was not built in a day. Quitting chrome these days is the easiest thing to do. The writing is on the way. You don't control the browser on your network, google does. ANd for better or worse, google's priori…

> most alternatives, until recently, were not great Curious to know, what viable alternatives did you discover?

OrganicMaps is a fantastic alternative - based on OSM data

https://organicmaps.app/

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

#943

Post by ljm »

Dig1t wrote: post #671
ljm wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle I agree, but chrome has an auto-update setup and using that mechanism to download several GBs of data that is not critical to the app itself is cause for question. Chrome is not entitled to my disk space just because I installed it and Microsoft has been excoriated for the exact same behaviour with AI.

>Chrome is not entitled to my disk space just because I installed it When you install any program it becomes entitled to your disk space, by the definition of installation. If you don’t like the program, you can just uninstall it and it’ll no longer take up your disk space.

It's entitled to what is a reasonable usage of disk space, which you generally know by the size of the installer. Some install mechanisms bypass that because they give you a minimal installer that then downloads the full package. It's not entitled to unlimited usage.

Using that same mechanism to pull in several GBs worth of extra data without any warning is sketchy. If this happened and did not respect any settings for running on a metered network then it is even worse.

Other applications where this entitlement is better understood usually have a mechanism to purge the space it uses. e.g. Docker will consume whatever space you give it but you have commands to purge that space or to limited how much it will consume if it goes through a VM.

I really don't know why anyone would try to defend a tech company on what is a table-stakes expectation for being a good actor in the ecosystem. It's really lowing the bar for the supplier's sake instead of keeping the bar high for the consumer.

As a counter point, Call of Duty (the game) was mocked for requiring a good 200+GB of disk space and the conspiracy was they did that to push other games out of your storage. The market response there is easy: don't buy COD and don't install it.

I don't think it's quite the same for a browser that abuses network effects to stay useful. In which case Chrome is to Google what IE6 was to MS. A separate topic but we know that not all browsers are considered equal on the web.

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

#944

Post by prepend »

jchw wrote: post #585
crazygringo wrote: post #560

Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…

It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman. Honestly, for most features you could justifiably say its fine. I mean honestly, how large is an Englis…

Have you looked at Chrome lately? It’s 1.88GB and there’s tons of crap in there I didn’t “consent to.”

Software is very bloated these days and I don’t think most projects allow users to pick and choose what part of the apps are installed or not.

MSWord takes up 2.6GB, btw.

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

#945

Post by RobRivera »

crazygringo wrote: post #560

Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…

Framing another person's opinion as silly is silly

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

#946

Post by prepend »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #881
ethagnawl wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a far cry from 4 GiB Equating a 4GB file installed without explicit consent to the installation of a language dictionary is comical. That's like saying an unwanted political mailer left in your mailbox is the equivalent of a pallette of hammers left in your driveway.

Honestly this is 2026. Chrome on my phone is nearly 2gb. Google on my phone is 1gb. 4gb storage isn't outrageous, Windows barely runs on anything below 128gb storage. Right now my phone has 445gb unused memory and usage isn't likely to go up much. My PlayStation eats 500gb for breakfast. Heck I use a 2011 Thinkpad for casual use and it should still be fine with it. This is also GOOGLE chrome, it serves their ends, in…

I don’t run Chrome and Google on my phone because they are so big on disk.

The only reason I ever install Google temporarily is because gmail requires it to log in.

Giant apps on phones is quite frustrating because some of us have small storage.

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

#947

Post by prepend »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #678
jchw wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman. Honestly, for most features you could justifiably say its fine. I mean honestly, how large is an Englis…

The issue is the size of the 'update' and the impact it'z going to have on your computer performance. If tomorrow Google was to include a Blockchain miner in Google chrome, you'd still say you consented to it by using their software ? Because I'm pretty sure that this LLM is also going to be used by Google to gather data on the user and feeding it to Google, hence just like the Blockchain miner using our computer res…

Chrome has been eating my CPU for years. Who knows what Google is doing, but it sucks. I wish they wouldn’t do that.

But I suppose hundreds of millions of people don’t mind based on the continued usage.

I miss programmers being proud of efficient code and size. I suspect moms of Chrome developers are embarassed to tell their friends.

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

#948

Post by prepend »

marcosdumay wrote: post #727
robot-wrangler wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone puts a camera and a microphone on devices that don't need them, then it's a) pushing up the price of goods for everyone with features that mainly serve corporate, b) there are bad actors out there even if you think corporate is a good one, c) no reason to think corporate is a good actor. Shipping an AI model with a browser is starting to look like sticking cameras on ALL glasses, not just smart glasses, re…

Shipping the model with the browser is exactly the opposite of what you are claiming. The alternative is sending the data to Google.

Google is doing both. They still ship to Google.

Knowing Google, the local model probably means even more data are sent to Google.

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

#949

Post by xp84 »

gremlinunderway wrote: post #769
xp84 wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have a specific number of GB in mind that an app can take up, below which it's totally their business, and above which they need to plead their case, disclose the purpose, and allow me to choose. What's that number? How did you arrive at it and why? My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows. Is this below or your line, or are they actually in trouble as soon as they're extracte…

What a completely asinine post. I'm sick of seemingly smart people in the technical world think they are being so clever by trying to literally rehash the continuum fallacy. You hear this literally everytime anyone even so much as suggests a standard, norm or god forbid a regulation. It seems especially common among libertarian types who think governance of any kind of simply impossible because of it. Just because th…

The idea I was replying to suggests "consent" is needed, but apparently just for this one example of bloat.

And doesn't explain how normal non-hacker users (99% of the audience) are supposed to judge what "4GB" means to them.

I'm all for users getting to have more control over the usage of their finite resources, especially in this cursed age of soldered-down storage and RAM. But I disagree that some dialog that explains the feature and asks permission to use 4GB would improve anything. Honestly, it wouldn't even improve the PR with this crowd, it would just change the headline to "Chrome pushing users to download and install a 4GB model for so-called 'AI features'!"

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

#950

Post by titzer »

account42 wrote: post #861
montroser wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to 2026, in which a browser is an operating system!

OS bloat is no less of a problem.

36GB Tahoe update and all I got was these rounded corners.
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