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.
Which males sense. Most people rarely act on indirect impact or moral arguments. I’d translate it to “Hey you know the latest version of Chrome is killing your battery. They made it do some of the AI calculations on your computer instead of their clpud because it’s too expensive so they want you to pay instead.” And I won’t send the original article.
Which males sense. Most people rarely act on indirect impact or moral arguments. I’d translate it to “Hey you know the latest version of Chrome is killing your battery. They made it do some of the AI calculations on your computer instead of their clpud because it’s too expensive so they want you to pay instead.” And I won’t send the original article.