5/5/2026 at 8:19:55 AM
https://archive.ph/vhTfmby jbub
5/5/2026 at 7:34:55 AM
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/by john-doe
5/5/2026 at 7:34:55 AM
by john-doe
5/5/2026 at 8:19:55 AM
https://archive.ph/vhTfmby jbub
5/5/2026 at 7:51:10 PM
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 practical discussion to have. Framing it around consent is unnecessarily inflammatory and makes it harder to have a discussion, not easier.
by crazygringo
5/5/2026 at 8:11:28 PM
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 English dictionary? 100 KiB? That is a far cry from 4 GiB. Just taking up 4 GiB of disk space without even asking is indeed a shit move no matter how you shake it. If Microsoft Word updated and suddenly took up 4 GiB more for something like a dictionary, it might not cause as much uproar as if it were something that many people are tired of hearing about and not interested in, but I'm not sure you would find a single soul who would find that acceptable, more just tolerated, probably partly because a lot of people simply wouldn't know better.
by jchw
5/5/2026 at 9:13:38 PM
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware ofYou 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 bundle.
I don't have even a single use for Siri on my Mac. It's useless AND redundant with the Siri that I have to have on my phone, yet Apple downloaded and installed "Siri" on there. If I install GarageBand which is the only first-party way to do basic audio manipulation, Apple installs at least 4GB of audio samples on my Mac.
None of this is to say "I approve of this exact thing Google is doing" - just that I agree with GP that this is exactly the same as what every big company (and many small ones) do every day.
The only "consent" we ever get is basically the all-or-nothing EULA we have to click Agree to in order to log in for the first time - the relevant terms are "Want computer? Accept that we will be shipping you all kinds of code constantly, for 'reasons.'"
by xp84
5/6/2026 at 2:29:45 AM
You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era.Yes, that's the problem
by anigbrowl
5/6/2026 at 11:50:21 AM
The problem here is that the on-device model is old news packed as clickbait without any research beyond his file system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034889 And all news outlets spreading it w/o any further research of their own.Policy GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings disables and removes the local model without any flag hacks since 2024. In Canary since January behind Settings > System > On-device AI
The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered.
by cachius
5/6/2026 at 8:44:35 PM
> The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered.Actually, it does claim this is the stable release channel. And it's reasonable to assume that if the author is documenting on a fresh profile / user account on the Mac, they probably downloaded the current (that day) release, though we're inferring when don't don't truly know for sure.
> 10. Code-signed, shipped through the normal release channel. This is not test build behaviour. It is Chrome stable.
I think it's poor form to run cover for one of the biggest corporations in the world like this. Don't let them off the hook. As the author correctly points out, metered connections are being abused. Hell, last month I somehow hit ATT's bandwidth limits on my mobile and got throttled for five days. It made my phone so unusable that I turned on hotspot on my work phone and connected to that over wifi when I went to lunch.
by alsetmusic
5/6/2026 at 6:39:43 AM
Yep. The fact that it is being hand waved away in this manner as if it was a valid argument is beyond maddening. I am starting to wonder if the move behind land and 'extreme personalization' of software is a fad I thought it was ( I mean, yeah regular users won't, but there is no helping some people if they don't want to be helped ).by iugtmkbdfil834
5/6/2026 at 2:35:48 PM
I had a client complain that some software we recommended installed a database. How fucking dare we install this giant blob of software without his consent! It was MySQL, and integral to the application.So what's your solution? A click-through acceptance of every single library, component, dependency, etc. every app uses?
P.S. - out here in the real world of the people who just use software, they don't want this. Which is its own problem, because they should care more than they do, but we play the hand we're delt.
by kjs3
5/6/2026 at 5:17:33 PM
That's going to the opposite extreme. Making major components optional and including some basic information about what they are at install time is easy to do. It's very common with creative software and even some games.I think this will be increasingly true in this extended period of more expensive memory and storage media. The Macbook Neo, for example, has 250GB onboard storage and 8gb memory. Many users will not want to spend 2% of their storage and allocate half their memory just to run a web browser.
by anigbrowl
5/6/2026 at 7:06:33 PM
I agree that the disk usage we're discussing here is especially painful on that hardware, but:> "just to run a web browser"
I don't even mean to be hyperbolic here, but 'running a web browser' is almost the only purpose of a MacBook Neo for at least 90% of its target audience.
Consider what normal people do on a laptop:
- Email - web browser
- Social media - web browser
- pay bills, research, book trips - web browser
- watch video content - web browser
For many users, you could hide the Dock and just autolaunch Chrome at Startup and it wouldn't have any negative impact on them.
And I'd bet that any browser with more than 5 tabs open, especially without an adblocker, is using whatever portion of its paltry 8GB of RAM that the OS hasn't hogged. So the argument to be made for allowing some feature bloat (and paying the space cost) in a browser is that this is probably the app most people will spend 75-100% of their time in anyway.
by xp84
5/6/2026 at 10:07:31 PM
Running a web browser _with a local AI model_ is likely something that most users are not aiming for. This is extra disk and bandwidth for something that benefits Google but does nothing for the average user.by danudey
5/6/2026 at 10:52:48 PM
And most users won't know and don't care. Doesn't make it right, or good, but it is true.by kjs3
5/6/2026 at 8:26:29 PM
That's going to the opposite extreme.I think it's the same extreme, it just shows up in different places, but fair enough. Both views are problematic.
Making major components optional
"I don't want no steenkin DB installed!". Unclick box...app doesn't work right, and now it's the vendors fault, and the vendor has to spend the time to explain to the (possibly non- or even anti-technical) user why. And the user will be on social media complaining about you.
Now, if you want some more extreme thinking, you in theory might never need to develop with a DB; you can just explicitly code all data handling in the app. There you go...no complaints about superfluous installs. Does any developer want to do that? Probably not; DBs are pretty nice abstractions for data handling.
And that's how the AI model here will be justified: this is how apps are built now, accept it or don't use the app. True or not, that'll be the party line.
including some basic information about what they are at install time is easy to do
Easy to do; hard to support. Now you're dealing with "I don't even know what a database is, much less do I want it or not" and you're doing tech support again. And the user will be on social media complaining about you.
Of course, the assumption that most users pay any attention at all to the instructions, disclosures and T&Cs of their software is almost comically quaint. Click, click, click, install.
I think this will be increasingly true in this extended period of more expensive memory and storage media.
This is by no means the first (or, yet AFAIK, worst) shortage of computer components. In the previous ones, I recall noone who said "I won't upgrade to the latest, more bloated version of MYReallyImportantApp because I don't have enough disk/memory/cpu". They delete a less important app, or accept performance isn't so good, or bite the bullet and find the scratch to upgrade. YMMV. And complain about it on social media.
Many users will not want to spend 2% of their storage and allocate half their memory just to run a web browser.
Oh yes they will. For many/most users, a web browser is pretty much all they use outside of maybe games. And most users have exactly zero idea how much each app consumes...they just assume when they double click it's go-time.
Personally, I doubt anything more than "This app uses AI. You good? Y/N." will work.
by kjs3
5/6/2026 at 12:01:16 AM
> 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 bundle.
So what are you saying? Don't be mad over this becoming the norm, just shut up and sit down and accept it?
by Razengan
5/6/2026 at 12:16:36 AM
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
by andrewmutz
5/6/2026 at 5:24:40 AM
On the contrary, you're only defending it because it is AI. If it were some other feature that many didn't want or ask for, you would empathize.by RedComet
5/6/2026 at 1:17:26 PM
A product like Chrome probably has 10,000-ish features, maybe more.Is your position really that any feature that “many” users failed to ask for must require additional consent to install?
And where is this registry features that a sufficient number of users asked for to allow it to be installed silently?
by brookst
5/6/2026 at 5:17:56 PM
>A product like Chrome probably has 10,000-ish features, maybe more.It doesn't have 10,000-ish features that take 4GB of space.
Chrome doesn't take 40TB on my hard drive.
The machine I'm typing it on has 10GB free right now, and that was after I cleaned it up. I noticed the hard drive filling up when I was doing nothing, but I didn't suspect Chrome of all tihngs.
by alterom
5/7/2026 at 2:27:15 PM
Ah, so it’s not so much “nobody asked for this”, it is more “this is a pain for my specific and unusual use case”. Also fair, just a different thing.by brookst
5/7/2026 at 5:36:18 PM
>“this is a pain for my specific and unusual use case”.Since when "being tight on storage space" is a "specific and unusual" case?
That's the whole marketing strategy of selling devices with small built-in storage (and no expandable storage, as iPhones do).
In any case, not wanting a ~150MB installation file to silently download and shit a ~4GB file all over your filesystem is not an unusual* case.
As sufficiently many people have pointed out.
by alterom
5/6/2026 at 6:04:38 AM
Not OP but no, I don’t care. Outrage at this is misguided at best.by baq
5/6/2026 at 2:38:10 PM
Outrage at this is misguided at best.Because it's AI. Got it.
by kjs3
5/6/2026 at 3:57:02 PM
no.by baq
5/6/2026 at 3:18:41 AM
if someone doesn’t want ai on their devices, you think it’s a double standard that they’re annoyed when it’s installed anyway?i’m not anti-ai by any stretch, but to pretend like their personal choices don’t matter is a bit too dismissive. it’s their choice, we probably shouldn’t imply other people having their own personal taste is hysterical or whatever it is you’re dancing around.
by toofy
5/6/2026 at 5:55:17 AM
There are many technologies that begin in the corporate world on the enterprise level, and/or in research and education fields, and then trickle down to consumers. And basically anytime a tech reaches consumers, it's a fait accompli; it's ingrained in the business world 100%; scientists and defense contractors have blessed it.The Avalanche Has Already Started. It is Too Late for the Pebbles to Vote. -- Ambassador Kosh Naranek
The funny thing about "AI Data Centers!!1!" is that they're unsurprising to anyone who knows the progression of this. First there were gigantic computers. Then telecom closets and machine rooms. Those machine rooms and closets got big and hungry! But they were hidden inside drab office space and far inside security perimeters and nobody really paid them mind, because it was part of doing business for the businesses.
Then came the cloud mania and corporations began gutting their machine rooms and migrating to the clouds. So if the consumption and demand for resources ramped up, who knows, but it was transferred from a very distributed, scattered model to centralized in a few big datacenters.
And now those datacenters are becoming an end unto themselves and everyone's gotta get one. Yeah, the scale and consumption of computing increases, but this has been evolutionary and it's only alarming because now, you can drive around a big city and pass several obvious data centers (and a few non-obvious ones) on your way. Did people freak out over AT&T constructing central offices? Dunno, those meant a lot of jobs. We all needed to reach out and touch someone.
But kinda wary about that Death Star.
by ButlerianJihad
5/6/2026 at 11:01:55 AM
Wow, a Babylon 5 quote, I'm impressed :)by rob74
5/6/2026 at 9:13:56 AM
>the internet is anti-ai right nowThe 'internet' is not an entity. Outrage and engagement drive ads. Beyond that 'AI' has very little benefit for most people and it's straight loss if you look at consumer electronics (getting price out of PCs) or energy prices.
by xxs
5/6/2026 at 10:10:37 AM
I’m actually quite interested in this on device scam detection and might be installing chrome on my aunts computer. She’s an upper 70s millionaire widow who is constantly confused and attacked by a deluge of convincing scam emails.I had no idea chrome had this feature. Wish Apple had something like this honestly. https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...
by salad-tycoon
5/6/2026 at 10:22:17 AM
>attacked by a deluge of convincing scam emails.Wouldn't be easier for an email provider to classify the emails already?
Other than that - if the tool provides utility is good. Personally, I'd not touch it - everyone in the family uses firefox everywhere (incl. phones)
by xxs
5/6/2026 at 8:17:04 AM
Oh no, why won't people leave the poor AI companies alone.by account42
5/6/2026 at 4:55:22 AM
> the internet is anti-ai right nowJust fyi, this is not a temporary phenomenon, not a phase. People dont like spam, robocalls, persistent advertising, even as we use the tools that enable them. They definitely wont like massive job losses, if that actually comes to fruition. Constant surveillance, "slop" news and entertainment, significantly reduced human contact - not popular. Like most technologies, AI benefits a small group - those who control the means of production - but everyone else loses out.
by listenallyall
5/6/2026 at 5:48:03 AM
Not just the Internet either. People are actively talking about data centres using available electricity, and the constant push from employers of using AI for things it clearly isn't suited for. Not to mention the constant "Let me talk to a real person" requests -- people see AI's everywhere and often have no desire to interact with them.by 2000UltraDeluxe
5/6/2026 at 9:12:39 AM
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illisby Gander5739
5/6/2026 at 5:48:42 PM
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.by goatlover
5/7/2026 at 5:24:44 PM
Yes—the threshold of new technology has re-opened the books on settled—or exhausted—arguments.Every paradigm shift offers the opportunity to relitigate old bargains.
by rexpop
5/6/2026 at 5:44:22 AM
It's because it's 4gb and Apple still sells devices with 256gb hard drives.by bfivyvysj
5/7/2026 at 2:52:10 AM
Those disks have been too small to be a reasonable default, and getting even more unreasonable by the day, for a decade, so while I agree that's a great reason to be quite peeved about this move, I'd be mad at Apple even more.by xp84
5/7/2026 at 7:18:58 AM
I know, I just get the feeling this thread is getting too far away from reality - lots of gas lighting about things that don't matter.by bfivyvysj
5/6/2026 at 12:42:57 AM
> just shut up and sit down and accept it?I mean, that's absolutely your only option other than simply choosing another browser. This will be a non-issue for 99% of Chrome users.
by k33n
5/6/2026 at 4:37:31 AM
I'm surprised so many people still use Chrome. there are perfectly serviceable browsers which block ads. do normies not know you can block ads if you use a different browser?by sterlind
5/6/2026 at 4:46:16 AM
They don't. A large number of them don't even care. Some even click on all of the "allow this site to send you notifications" and then proceed to get spammed by hundreds of notifications on their phone/PC. And don't mind it.by kirenida
5/7/2026 at 2:53:01 AM
You are very right, though it's difficult for those of us here to imagine it. 20 years ago, people would browse the Web through a 11-inch by 4 inch slit because all the adware toolbars had nearly occluded the whole viewport. Today most of the webpages themselves look like that without an adblocker and most people just tolerate it. And even click the ads!by xp84
5/6/2026 at 8:24:32 AM
It clearly isn't the only other option - otherwise you wouldn't have people like you and others in this thread being outraged about people taking one of the other options.That we as a society are beholden to corporations is a myth those corporations want you to believe but its not how things actually work. If we come together to say no then those corporations either comply or will cease to exist.
by account42
5/6/2026 at 3:50:40 PM
What did I say that made you think I’m outraged? If a product isn’t suiting you, just use a different product. Personally, I switched to Firefox years ago.I’m a bit confused about the activist mindset being applied to a web browser, as if there’s some kind of human right that entitles you to dictate what will or won’t be bundled inside Chrome.
If the internet was like this in 2015, there would have been riots over Chrome implementing DRM for video. Widevine?! Not on our watch!
by k33n
5/6/2026 at 3:46:02 AM
quietly uninstalls Chromeby forgetfreeman
5/6/2026 at 8:23:07 AM
It's a Brave new world.by tags2k
5/6/2026 at 12:02:29 PM
https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/by lproven
5/6/2026 at 12:13:57 AM
It's not "becoming the norm." It's been the norm for decades. And yes, you should not be mad about the norm.by ambrozk
5/6/2026 at 12:20:55 AM
> And yes, you should not be mad about the norm.Right and if slavery and virgin sacrifices happen for decades we should just join in
by Razengan
5/6/2026 at 12:43:40 AM
Deeply incongruous example tbh.by k33n
5/6/2026 at 2:14:19 AM
Is it? It's kind of the heart of the matter - just because something is common doesn't mean it's acceptable. The difference is that in our society we've all agreed the sacrificing is no longer acceptable.by lostglass
5/6/2026 at 2:38:25 PM
The comment above was literally gaslighting against complaining about bad behavior that is common and going on for a long time.by Razengan
5/5/2026 at 10:12:48 PM
I, personally, have found the adtech bloat (for both disk space and processor usage) to be a huge issue for quite some time. If this is the hill where the public decides to take a stand I'll happily stand beside them to try and reverse this gradual enshittification. I think several other hills were more worthy to defend but nobody noticed those ones so apparently this is the place to fight that fight.I doubt anyone would appreciate software bloat purely because of how widespread it is[1] - it just hasn't risen to the level where it's so noticeable for such a contemporarily controversial topic yet.
1. As an aside - ubisoft game sizes are absolutely bonkers. I didn't realize that each Assassin's Creed had twelve different operating systems crammed into it but I can't see how else they're clocking in where they do.
by munk-a
5/6/2026 at 8:13:47 AM
Modern games include assets with very large file sizes that operating systems do not.by oneeyedpigeon
5/6/2026 at 2:39:49 PM
Yeah, I was surprised to learn that Ticket to Ride (downloaded on Steam) uses like a half gigabyte, but the most data-intense thing it does is a few musical tracks and 2D images with scaling. They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB.by SilasX
5/7/2026 at 2:43:39 AM
I would confidently state that in terms of hours of enjoyment per byte, nothing can come even close to the 16-bit era. I can't count how many hours of Super Mario World I played. 512 freakin KB. I don't think anything will ever come close to it - and even if you measured one full typical playthrough.by xp84
5/7/2026 at 1:13:46 PM
>They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB.Sure, the good old days where _all of this didn't work without specialized hardware that you bought with every single cartridge_. Mode 7 didn't come for free, it was an entire additional, single purpose chip in the cart on a console that didn't have any concept of task management or even OS. But hey, if you want to have to plug in and swap PCIE cards for each piece of software that you want to run, feel free to reinstall DOS.
by well_ackshually
5/6/2026 at 8:58:49 AM
There's a name for when a virus scanner finds a program that may have a legitimate purpose, yet is typically bundled into other software in a malicious manner.It's called a PUP, or Potentially Unwanted Program and most anti-viruses offer to remove them. They can be legitimately installed, but often aren't. (Usually they were shipped in the installers of legitimate software downloaded from sketchy distributors.)
Random AI models being shipped with Chrome is very much a PUP. The user wanted to browse the internet, not use a model. They'd install an extension if they wanted that.
The Ask toolbar was seen as a virus. Mozilla had massive user bleed in Firefox due to installing sponsored extensions in the browser. The only reason this shit isn't regarded the same way is because it's both done by Google and because it's labeled with AI, so all AI bros have to retroactively find an excuse to justify it.
by noirscape
5/5/2026 at 9:05:46 PM
> That is a far cry from 4 GiBEquating 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.
by ethagnawl
5/5/2026 at 9:37:51 PM
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 extracted?
My point is just that it seems there may be an arbitrary limit here that may not be the same for everyone (and 90% of users are nontechnical and thus couldn't give an answer whether 4GB is "worth it" for whatever the features are). Rather than add another whole ecosystem of "Cancel or Allow?" dialogs I'd rather operating systems did a better job of letting users put piggish applications on a strict space budget. Most of the apps on my phone are storing half a gig of "stuff" (called "Documents & Data" but not itemized, and even apps that have none of my 'data' such as browsers), which I can't force them to dump even in an extreme emergency. I can only delete the whole app.
I'm talking about Apple platforms as examples because I use those a lot and with their epic stinginess of SSD, anyone who doesn't pay $400 more than the base model will exhaust their storage within hours to months.
by xp84
5/5/2026 at 10:24:44 PM
People don't typically have specific numbers already set aside whenever they discuss what is too much. The example given was people can handle a political flyer in the mailbox but not a pallet of hammers delivered in their driveway. Do you have specific amounts (probably will need to be a weight limit and a volume limit) already figured out when you think of how much junk someone can mail to you reasonably? Or how much HD space a browser is allowed to install before it gets to be not-their-buisness?by Morromist
5/5/2026 at 11:17:32 PM
My arbitrary limit is "not 5x from when I installed it". Like if my gallon milk jug was suddenly 36 inches tall.by snypher
5/7/2026 at 8:51:26 AM
aren't most installers like 10 mb then downloads when run? that's way more then 5xby sfmike
5/5/2026 at 11:25:46 PM
Skinny milk jug.by NuclearPM
5/6/2026 at 8:28:01 AM
So as long as I'm allowed to bump into you I can also smash your face in, right? After all there isn't any clear point where I'm applying too much force.by account42
5/6/2026 at 4:40:25 AM
agreed that not everyone has the same limit, but 4GB is big enough to be annoying to many. that still costs real money (in bandwidth) and storage (on low-end hardware) for a lot of folks.by sterlind
5/5/2026 at 10:16:40 PM
> My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on WindowsThat's kind-of the point though right? An application that has been say <700 MB for decades, suddenly deciding it'll take a multiple of it's size without asking seems pretty unreasonable, I think it's pretty fair to say the expectations for Chrome were set already.
It'd be similarly unreasonable for a video game that once took 50 GB, to suddenly decide to take 400 GB.
by Arelius
5/6/2026 at 10:42:48 AM
That depends on how you count, though.Local storage and cache only have limits relative to available disk space in Chrome, IIRC, and can easily bloat to 100 GB without intervention. Personally I think that's a design flaw and they need customizable hard limits as well, but web browsers wasting space without asking is not a new or sudden development.
by boredhedgehog
5/6/2026 at 1:46:02 AM
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 there is a gradual spectrum between two states doesn't mean we can't draw distinctions. For example, just because we cannot define the exact, precise color when blue turns into green, it does not mean that blue and green are the same color for any normal person discussing an issue publicly in good faith.
When someone says "X and Y are on a spectrum, X is good and Y is bad", the point is to highlight the differences. Pointing out that the spectrum or continuum might not have a precise boundary has literally zero weight towards the validity of the ultimate conclusion a person is making here and really is just a complete derail done by people who have no substantive points to make.
by gremlinunderway
5/6/2026 at 6:55:46 PM
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'!"
by xp84
5/6/2026 at 10:32:50 AM
Agreed. If anything your comment is too charitable. This is just one of the GP's highly sophistic comments here. Considering how he is exploiting the sorites paradox, I wouldn't be surprised if he bases his sophism on Zeno's paradox from time to time.Excuse me while I go count the hairs on my chin to see if they are >= MIN_BEARD_THRESHOLD.
by jibal
5/6/2026 at 7:16:32 PM
I'm sorry to have offended you. I had to go research all your interesting Greek philosophy terms.I don't think it's too much to ask that someone at least define their line if they are saying apps must ask permission to use disk space. I didn't say consent is irrelevant. And I think when you're asking to burden the user with a technical question such as "Can I use 4GB" I struggle to see how most people can make a good informed choice. You can argue in this one case that the AI model is not useful and therefore it's "good actually" if users, not being able to judge what 4GB is, reject it even when they actually had plenty of space. But it seems like those who disagree with me here aren't really speaking to whether the model is useful (or if it has future potential), they're mad specifically about an app downloading a thing that's 'too big.'
Also, just pointing out - Apple also uses ODMs, which it installs on its customers' hardware via its normal default-on software update procedure, to power its (imho mostly useless) AI - to great praise for the positive privacy ramifications of on-device. So it's interesting to me that this one model's presence is being cited as a betrayal of user trust. I admit though that it's whataboutism to imply that excuses the behavior of anyone else - if we are saying that any software downloading anything over 1GB (or whatever) is bad.
by xp84
5/6/2026 at 3:08:46 AM
Is your objection just to the bloat, or also to what the bloat is for?by tqi
5/6/2026 at 4:46:41 AM
Personally I'm pissed at both. A large jump in requirements without warning is bad, if I want to avoid it I now need to take immediate less considered actions or get stuck with the consequences. Plenty of decent software actually lets you decide what plugins to install for added functionality, chrome actually has a extensions store that they could have put this crap in.Yes it's also that it's AI and mostly that chrome is foisting off all the cost of that AI model to me and other users. Without warning and explaining what this model is, is my workplaces power cost going to be up 10% because of whatever they want to run it for? Who knows.
There'd be a lot less complaining if they'd actually warned and less still if they asked.
by greycol
5/6/2026 at 12:06:17 PM
I'm picturing a splash screen announcing the feature(s) it enables, with a Download buttonby jorisw
5/6/2026 at 5:36:40 AM
Except this mythical pallet of hammers takes up 0.1% of my hard drive instead of 0.0001%. And it isn't blocking me from moving my car. And...yea your analogy doesn't even remotely make sense
by tjwebbnorfolk
5/6/2026 at 9:45:08 AM
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 the past that was to render internet unimpeded (they saw a need then), needs change. I'd rather models serve most requests locally anyway, so long as it's not destroying my battery life.
Remember the whole chrome-RAM-gate saga? This shouldn't be shocking to anyone. PC's shipping 8gb ram, Google removing ad blocker extensions, these should be the real rally points.
by KoolKat23
5/6/2026 at 5:23:53 PM
>4gb storage isn't outrageous, Windows barely runs on anything below 128gb storagSo, 4GB is outrageous because it takes the very little space left after the existing bloat.
It also still makes Chrome install at least 5X larger.
by alterom
5/7/2026 at 10:45:50 PM
Not too long ago my chrome install was 30mb, this isn't anything different.by KoolKat23
5/8/2026 at 6:36:40 AM
>Not too long ago my chrome install was 30mb, this isn't anything different."Not long ago" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
The install file for Chrome 42 circa April, 2015 was 46MB [1].
That's eleven years ago.
The first ever Chrome release installer was around 20MB.
To say politely, you're not telling the truth.
>this isn't anything different.
Chrome installer from 2015 was 46MB.
Chrome installer from 2026 is ~140MB.
That's a 3X increase over a decade, by a grand total of 100MB.
Then they're adding 4GB to that overnight.
It is, I'd wager, something different.
[1] https://google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/windows/download/14786...
[2] https://google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/windows/download/11608...
by alterom
5/8/2026 at 4:24:25 PM
11 years ago in laptop terms is still useable.To get so upset over this is crazy, no need to be so pedantic. Needs change.
Your 2015 MacBook pro had 8gb ram and 128gb storage, the current equivalent has minimum 24gb ram and 1tb or 2tb. Please explain what you're using all this storage for?? Raw footage or something, well there's some double standards it's just a photo too if this is just a browser. 4gb is immaterial.
by KoolKat23
5/8/2026 at 8:56:09 PM
>11 years ago in laptop terms is still useable11 years in human terms isn't "not long ago".
Nether is "never", which is the time when Chrome was under 30mb installed.
>To get so upset over this is crazy, no need to be so pedantic
Of course. It's just that those small, insignificant details that you are wrong about is your entire point.
>Needs change
What needs to change? Says who? Why?
Software not taking extra gigabytes out of the blue for features I never asked for without notifying or having an option to not do that —
— sorry, this absolutely does not need to change.
>Please explain what you're using all this storage for??
Absolutely none of your business.
I'll tell you what it's not for:
4GB LLM's that one of the browsers on my machine decides to download.
You're welcome.
by alterom
5/9/2026 at 8:46:20 PM
You speak as if you've never used Chrome, Windows or Mac OS before.By your same logic. You should be using chromium at the very minimum.
by KoolKat23
5/10/2026 at 2:05:07 AM
> the current equivalent has minimum 24gb ram and 1tb or 2tb... and not everyone is running the current equivalent. So, while 4gb may be immaterial _to you_, that is not the case for everyone.
by ethagnawl
5/6/2026 at 6:51:05 PM
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.
by prepend
5/7/2026 at 10:45:01 PM
My 2011 Lenovo has 4GB ram yet everyone will tell me new PC's requiring more is "progress", this is not anything new.by KoolKat23
5/5/2026 at 9:48:30 PM
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 ressources (space & performance) to feed Google yearly benefits.
by aucisson_masque
5/6/2026 at 6:53:14 PM
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.
by prepend
5/6/2026 at 6:47:39 AM
Hey, you got the point. Is there a chance that Google actually plans to use users' computers as their edge computing devices?by ZetsuBouKyo
5/6/2026 at 4:03:01 AM
> 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.You know, I never thought about it like that, but it is true. The bloat and spyware is a core part of the OS now.
It's just more efficient that way!
by andai
5/5/2026 at 9:10:02 PM
Chrome installs additional software that 99% of users don't use. It can intercept and modify code running on your computer, and spies on all network requests. Hackers use it to analyze potential vulnerabilities. 90% of users aren't even aware that it exists!by hatthew
5/6/2026 at 4:37:52 PM
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of.You just described at least 90% of the software packages on your machine, if not 100%. Almost all software contains modules that go unused by certain users.
by stronglikedan
5/5/2026 at 9:09:28 PM
You could say the same thing about shipping V8 with Chrome. Some users disable JS so shipping V8 with Chrome is additional software they didn't ask for.by fastball
5/6/2026 at 2:08:44 AM
The old unix administrator would expect a platform to ship choice of JS that would be in /usr/bin/JS. The local administrator would add their local choice of JS /usr/local/bin/V8.The browser would then have a configuration option of which JS interpreter to use.
by detourdog
5/6/2026 at 2:26:53 AM
Bad analogy. "Some users disable it" is very different from "it was introduced without any notification or information about what it does and the vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it".by r-w
5/6/2026 at 6:19:04 AM
> vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward itCitation very much needed. Technologists are not laypeople, and are almost certainly a vocal minority.
by fastball
5/6/2026 at 3:06:13 PM
I'm surprised by this request. People detest AI.Local subreddits are filled with posts "calling out" usage of AI by local businesses or governments. Consensus is that persons who are found out to be be AI users should be fired or resign, businesses that use it should be boycotted / shamed, etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newfoundland/comments/1t3x6q3/aialt...
https://www.reddit.com/r/PEI/comments/1s8rtyn/burger_love_ai...
---
Protests around a data center construction project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Q9ncOdnDg
by NiloCK
5/6/2026 at 5:32:59 PM
ChatGPT (a 3 year old product) has nearly one billion WAU.Some people detest businesses slopping AI at them, but the evidence suggests consumers love using AI, which is presumably one of the primary uses of a micro LLM model that runs locally on your computer and is embedded in your browser.
People that post on "local subreddits" and the randos that protest datacenters are once again a vocal minority. Reddit in particular is probably the most echo-chambery destination on the web.
by fastball
5/6/2026 at 5:59:31 PM
There's an important distinction between chatbots people go to on websites or download from the app store versus a product downloading without their consent. There's also a massive difference from large power and water hungry data centers being built near people. I don't think those are particularly popular across party lines regardless of ChatGPT usage.So yeah in general AI as a helpful tool people use online is popular. AI to replace jobs, build data centers and do unknown things on your device without consent, not so much. AI to potentially replace workers, not popular at all.
by goatlover
5/7/2026 at 1:21:03 AM
I'm not sure you understand the distinction you are making.The model Google is shipping with Chrome runs on device. ChatGPT does not. The people that dont like data centers should love this feature. Same with people who are concerned about privacy.
by fastball
5/6/2026 at 10:07:33 PM
Reddit also has ~1B MAU.If it's an echo chamber of AI hatred, then I think this makes the case that there are substantial numbers of people in that camp also?
AI as a product is bimodal in terms of the opinions people have of it.
by NiloCK
5/6/2026 at 6:04:15 PM
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.
by prepend
5/6/2026 at 12:54:01 PM
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware ofYou mean like Siri? It does the exact same thing and no one asked for it, either. That shit barely works too.
by neya
5/6/2026 at 10:00:08 PM
> I mean honestly, how large is an English dictionary? 100 KiB?If it contains less than 50,000 words, perhaps, but most standard print dictionaries contain ~500,000 entries. The size of /usr/share/dict/words on my system is 954 KiB and the small version of the cracklib dictionary is 481 KiB.
by Mr_Minderbinder
5/6/2026 at 11:02:54 AM
That 4 GiB will also update daily, because without churn it will be dead.by GoblinSlayer
5/5/2026 at 8:37:24 PM
An AI is not additional software. Infact, a model is not software.by kaptainscarlet
5/5/2026 at 8:55:46 PM
It's not processor op-codes, but sure it's part of the software. You wouldn't say that a set of precomputed weights in a numerical integrator aren't part of the software, would you? Or say that the graphics in a game aren't part of the software?by knappa
5/5/2026 at 8:42:48 PM
> a model is not softwareWhen does code become software?
by JumpCrisscross
5/5/2026 at 8:55:29 PM
How does that change anything? It doesn't matter if you categorize it as software or not, unwanted is unwanted. And frankly I just flatly disagree, you could certainly make the case that model weights are a form of software.by jchw
5/5/2026 at 9:12:10 PM
If they downloaded a 4GiB media file of some Irish band that nobody asked for, people would be upset as well. It doesn't matter what the 4GiB contains. If it is not going to be used by the user and the user didn't ask for it, that's just idiotic to think people would not be upset about it.by dylan604
5/6/2026 at 3:46:35 AM
I think we are agreeing.by jchw
5/5/2026 at 8:53:03 PM
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, regardless of whether anyone wants that. Saying this is fine and not unusual is clearly motivated reasoning and just normalizes the surveillance state. It's very obvious the way this ends. Browser-based models will eventually be using your computer at the edge to save corporate money in the cloud while they do ever more expensive and invasive stuff to profile you.
by robot-wrangler
5/5/2026 at 11:19:14 PM
Shipping the model with the browser is exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.The alternative is sending the data to Google.
by marcosdumay
5/6/2026 at 2:15:51 AM
Back to the assumptions.If the onboard LLM means no data sending and you get your own little service wholly subservient to you like a good little program. That's nice!
If the onboard LLM means better data filtering, possibly even exploration of the local system, to send information to Google while lessening their datacentre bills running LLM services. That seems a little underhanded to just bake into things without notification.
Pick your assumption, you get your outcome. What are your assumptions?
by _carbyau_
5/6/2026 at 3:32:10 AM
Why assume? it should be observable. You can check the code and data traffic to see how it is used.by blackoil
5/6/2026 at 9:43:37 AM
Can't observe the future, so learn from the past.. or use common sense. You don't react to a stranger or a mysterious camera in your household by saying, wow ok, let's see if anything bad happens.by robot-wrangler
5/6/2026 at 6:55:17 PM
Google is doing both. They still ship to Google.Knowing Google, the local model probably means even more data are sent to Google.
by prepend
5/5/2026 at 11:27:38 PM
No, what's misguided is equating the legal definition of consent ("It's in the ToS") with actual consent. When everyone (especially google) knows 99% of users don't read the ToS. Can they sue over it in a court of law? Maybe, maybe not. But they can write articles, spread the word and generate bad press for google. Then maybe consent will be actual rather than constructive.by jasonfarnon
5/5/2026 at 10:07:55 PM
> Framing it around consent is unnecessarily inflammatory and makes it harder to have a discussion, not easier.For me the most significant problem is the lack of consent. I assume it's just not how you want to frame the problem. Ignoring the problematic parts or behavior of some sort of behavior is a common problem in modern software, and it's actually what the article is complaining about.
by grayhatter
5/5/2026 at 10:48:25 PM
I don't think this is a question of framing or ignoring problematic behavior at all. I'm quite certain that you wouldn't find it anywhere near comparably egregious if Google added a new developer option without your consent- the most significant problem is the 4GB and the LLM. And, of course, you did consent to their software terms. You are free to switch browsers. What does consent have to do with this?by ToValueFunfetti
5/5/2026 at 11:39:47 PM
yes, no one would have a problem with it if it were useful, so what, they're hypocrites if they don't like it because it's useless? actually, people generally only complain about consent when they didn't like what happened. the takeaway is that if it's an update that will be thrusted upon a user, deliver value for them. and it's your problem, not the user's, to persuade them that what you're thrusting upon them has value.by pasquinelli
5/7/2026 at 12:06:42 PM
Use a different browser. Firefox works great. You're trying to negotiate with terrorists.by Zetaphor
5/5/2026 at 10:38:03 PM
Exactly this. My issue with Microslop isn't that they're using AI, that is its own can of worms.It's the fact that they were forcing it into MY computer, using MY bandwidth for THEIR profit goals. The lack of consent was the final nail in the coffin for me, no computer in my house uses Windows now, and it will at best be a long time before that changes.
I got rid of Chrome ages ago as well. Chrome's only redeeming feature is its user base. It's slower, uses more system resources, ugly as a browser, and now its an AI rapist too.
by BizarroLand
5/5/2026 at 8:49:33 PM
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.
by ljm
5/5/2026 at 9:38:29 PM
>Chrome is not entitled to my disk space just because I installed itWhen 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.
by Dig1t
5/6/2026 at 5:54:03 PM
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.
by ljm
5/5/2026 at 10:41:23 PM
This is a good point, given there is no shortage of alternative browsers, even if there is a relative paucity of alternative browser engines.by pocksuppet
5/6/2026 at 3:55:42 AM
That's like saying users have no right to push against certain features. It's like saying Windows Recall was always ok and there was never any reason to demand it not be installed. The only difference is one can choose to use a different browser easier than they can choose a different OS.You're right in the sense that practicality and consent are orthogonal issues. There are probably stronger arguments to complain about a feature than the disk use.
by laserbeam
5/6/2026 at 8:37:01 AM
> The only difference is one can choose to use a different browser easier than they can choose a different OS.I'm not even sure that is actually true for most people. If you mainly work in the browser, which many do, then you can change the OS under it without impacting the user too much but change the browser and there will need to be much more to adapt/relearn.
by account42
5/7/2026 at 12:19:52 PM
Changing the browser is an order of magnitude less friction than changing browsers. The UX in every browser is essentially the same, that's not the case between Windows, Mac, and the various DE's on Linuxby Zetaphor
5/6/2026 at 3:50:17 AM
> It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it.So where is the line we draw where bait-and-switch goes from being acceptable to unacceptable?
MA Chapter 93A for example clearly says that businesses are prohibited from "unfair or deceptive practices" including misrepresentation or concealing defects. Where do you think the line should be?
If you market a product as a Browser and it's codebase is 10% browser related and 90% some other program... Should Google have to correctly represent that product?
Related; If you didn't like when Apple forced you to use Siri on your phone, why did you purchase a Mac? Did you not expect them to continue disrespecting your sovereignty after you let them get away with it the first couple dozen times?
by zelon88
5/5/2026 at 10:12:37 PM
> It's just part of the software.What isn't part of the software? Can they just install as much garbage they want to, as long as they claim it is part of the "browser"?
Also, scale absolutely matters. If I pull up in front of your house and say "hey, mind if I park here?" and you say yes, then I park, walk away, and 10 minutes later park a fleet of 18 wheelers in front of your house, you're going to feel like I wasn't...entirely forthcoming about what I intended.
by titzer
5/5/2026 at 8:59:45 PM
Couldn't the same argument be made for Chrome suddenly including a bitcoin miner? Seems like that would be a difference in degree rather than in kind.by eCa
5/5/2026 at 9:40:59 PM
The difference would be intent. A nearby comment worries that the endgame is the ODM being used to monitor you and report back. Certainly wouldn't put it past the world's biggest ad company to think of that! And if that is what purpose it's put to, I think I'll be mad too.If Chrome shipped a crypto miner and used the resulting coins generated on my device to let me automatically bypass paywalls with micropayments that would be way better than if they shipped the same and just took the coins.
by xp84
5/5/2026 at 8:07:43 PM
Where does this line of thinking end? What couldn't be construed as part of the software?by luke727
5/5/2026 at 8:22:31 PM
What is the line is a good question. I'm strongly pro-user agency, but I still think consent is more around what actually impacts the user. If there's some safeguards, for exceptional cirumstances that users can get into if they need it, I feel like the software has to be doing more, having more of an impact on you for there to be an offense or problem here.That said, I do want to amplify agency. I don't immediately know what to expect for disarming this. If a website starts hitting the API heavily and my machine's fans are spinning up, where am I at, and what do I expect? It feels like the web is close already, with a pretty sophisticated permissions model, where we go to look for things. I'm interested in an evolved permissions model for the web, where even when permissions are on by default, it's the same flow to turn them off. I think that would remove a lot of the grounds for "I don't want this" that seems so persistently abundant these days.
Even it feels like the risk is so low/non-existent, if the user's demanding less agency from the their user agent, in principle I guess we ought give them the less that they asked for. Usually. But that always has some kind of practical limit too. CSS made some people mad! It's ok for this not to be the software for you, for you to go need to go somewhere else.
I believe that relatively inert capabilities like this, where mostly it's taking up some storage space and joules, is generally not really altering the contract, and is fine.
by jauntywundrkind
5/5/2026 at 8:14:25 PM
It ends at the usual place, the shrink-wrap agreement. What did the license agreement say?by CamperBob2
5/5/2026 at 8:16:34 PM
Nobody knows because its unreasonable to expect people to read them.by olyjohn
5/6/2026 at 3:17:14 AM
agreements don't always hold up to legal scrutiny. In cases where it is unreasonable, it won't be able to stand up in court. And in any case, this is not a legal matter but a user experience / public opinion oneby itemize123
5/6/2026 at 3:34:57 AM
You're right, it's not a legal matter. You and I will readily agree that bundling a 4 GB language model with a Web browser is unreasonable, but how do you envision making that case in court?My guess is that maybe one in 1000 Chrome users will even notice it.
by CamperBob2
5/5/2026 at 8:00:16 PM
It is changing the product significantly. I wanted/consented to a browser. Nothing more. Agreeable, nothing new with the browser vendor pushing plugins down our throat which are not browser core features, nevertheless not right.by oaiey
5/5/2026 at 10:04:24 PM
Welcome to 2026, in which a browser is an operating system!by montroser
5/6/2026 at 8:45:41 AM
OS bloat is no less of a problem.by account42
5/6/2026 at 6:58:55 PM
36GB Tahoe update and all I got was these rounded corners.by titzer
5/5/2026 at 8:54:02 PM
> I wanted/consented to a browser. Nothing more.I agree. I want just a browser. No non-browser-related features, such as JavaScript, CSS, WebRTC, WebGPU, Wasm, etc. Nope, just browsing.
Edit: /s, obviously
by hackyhacky
5/5/2026 at 9:18:35 PM
That's a dumb argument to make as all of those things are used to render the browsing experience. You can disagree with them being necessary or not, but they are part of the experience.You'd be much better off arguing you wanted/consented to a browser, but you got 3 toolbars installed as well and a couple of extensions that report back every keystroke to their respective mothership.
by dylan604
5/5/2026 at 10:49:07 PM
I think you missed my sarcasm. Sorry if I was being too subtle. My intent was to point out that "just a browser" is a meaningless phrase as the functionality of browsers changes.by hackyhacky
5/5/2026 at 11:34:14 PM
Yup, I did. I read it as an HTML purist that thinks all of that stuff is ruining the web never leaving Reader mode pining for the days of Gopherby dylan604
5/6/2026 at 6:20:42 AM
A better example of a non-browser feature that crept into browsers would be PDF viewing.by ThrowawayR2
5/5/2026 at 8:23:44 PM
> nothing new with the browser vendor pushing plugins down our throat which are not browser core featuresYou need to find another browser, if your desire is only browser core features. You have that freedom!! You can do it!
On the other hand: I don't think anyone caters to that position, because it's a bad/nonsense position, that users don't want. There are some browsers that come closer to this, but this idea of "browser core features" is, on the face of it, to me, reduction deeply into the absurd.
by jauntywundrkind
5/5/2026 at 8:34:13 PM
> this idea of "browser core features" is, on the face of it, to me, reduction deeply into the absurd.To counter this, the idea that the BROWSER should be doing other things than BROWSE is insane to me.
It is very clear that you and I came of age in a very different environment with a very different mindset.
The moment somebody starts forcing additional packages, some which may even be larger in scope and code than the primary software, throw them in the woodchipper. That's dirty, disgusting behavior that removes user agency and exploits the trust between those developers / company and the user.
Absolutely not.
We've been down this road before and people hated it. Most, if not all of those companies, died.
by esseph
5/5/2026 at 9:35:52 PM
My biggest beef with the browser's unchecked scope creep is that its role as an application platform is fulfilled in a manner that's completely at odds with the original purpose of a browser as a user agent. They're running untrusted third party code by default, letting sites embed spyware, and constantly adding more anti-features. Treating this as normal is insane from an unindoctrinated viewpoint. Acting like people who question this status quo are being unreasonable is an insult to everyone who cares about privacy or security.by wtallis
5/6/2026 at 12:36:25 AM
Yeah, I came up with BBS and being amazed at watching us connect & grow capabilities, in ways that anyone could easily use. That was and is incredible & amazing. I struggle to see what reached out & touched you, has you (from my perspective) so shook & anti- willing! I can't imagine not seeing the hope & awesomeness!! I agree: we do have very different backgrounds, it seems like!There's libraries, still: big buildings with books on them, if you want to go browse static dead information that sits there! You can even check out books on your phone now; thanks Libby app! Your use case is already super well fulfilled! Has been for a long time! You can go do that!
It's absurd to me how conservative & constraining some people want the world to be. A reduction of possibility, that itself feels absurd, taken to even more absurd anti existence, anti possibility. There's been no platform on earth where it's so easy to make cool neat software and experiences for yourself & friends, where we can do so much. From a static website! That power is incredible. That power had been locked away forever and somehow it became very easy, yet still reasonably sandboxed, and is available to all, so easily: and that's nothing short of a miracle.
And as ever it's always the same! The same shit! "The story so far: after packaged software, the web was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Just go use a browser that works for you, and stop trying to ensnare the whole world in your very limited very constrained narrow view of expectations/desires. Don't expect the universe to reduce itself to your level! Especially because: the web will let you have the browser you want! There's other media-forms that are everywhere that are even more set, as per your desires! But man, to moralize & outrage against those who don't want the web to be but a book that's online? I don't sympathize at all, and I don't understand the basis where this comes from, and I so strongly feel there's been way way way too much of this frankly bad attitude; I think this is very broadly a popular anti-sentiment to whinge over, that is far too over-expressed. And it's so small, so limiting a world, that's so unclear & so unexplained. The world wide web doesn't need to fit in such a tiny box. This is human capability, that increasingly is the means open to all, for the Dream Machines to be made with, for intergalactic internets to connect people with. Sure! A lot of that hasn't gone great, we don't like what has been built!
But it's always seemed so clear and so obvious to me that this democratic access to platform, available on any device, that let's us do so much, is a fragile sacred thing. And that taking that away is to give up all hope of ever having systems that are good for us.
by jauntywundrkind
5/5/2026 at 8:23:57 PM
It’s actually really useful for web devs to have access to a local model. Whether or not browsers should bundle their own rather than using the system-provided model(s) is up for debate, however. For the time being, though, Google does have some of the better small ones.Furthermore, users aren’t going to want to have to wait for an extra thing to download before their web apps can use AI.
That’s the thing… Without context of why, users probably wouldn’t want a 4 GB download. But they do want their web apps to work properly. When there’s a specific use case they’re interested in, they will want to have it, and they won’t want to wait.
by syndeo
5/5/2026 at 8:36:26 PM
You haven't even tried to provide a hypothetical example of what a web app should try to do using a local LLM, nor addressed the obvious questions about how that kind of thing should be standardized, what level of local LLM capability is reasonable for a web app to expect, or how permissions for that should be managed given that a local LLM is not just a tax on local storage capacity.So why should anyone take it as a foregone conclusion that this is an instance where web devs should get what they want? In general, the browser should be acting in the best interests of the user and not automatically granting the wishes of every web site that wants to drain your battery.
by wtallis
5/6/2026 at 6:13:01 AM
One example I have that made me excited for this feature is the free recipe manager website I run.Many of the paid-for competitors give users the ability to import unstructured recipe data these days from sites like instagram or at least text-only websites.
I can't afford to offer this as a feature since my website has no advertising and I just pay for it out of pocket, but it's an incredibly easy feature to add if you have the money to pay for tokens.
If I could use a local llm to do it though that runs in the person's own browser then I think it would definitely be valuable.
That said, I'm not sure the state of local llms provides a good enough experience yet (small models and slow) but that doesn't mean that in the future it might not be useful.
The propsosed apis do work for this purpose, albeit more slowly and lower quality
by martinbooth
5/5/2026 at 9:52:38 PM
> not automatically granting the wishes of every web site that wants to drain your battery.Pretty sure that ship sailed way back when Flash ruled the Internet, and it's still sailing more than ever today.
Browsers are just weird sandboxed VMs now. They have nothing to do with their original purpose. Don't be mad at me, I like shipping webapps that render documents server-side and use even JS incredibly sparingly. I'm just reporting what I see. The browser exists as a way to make developing completely proprietary apps with proprietary UIs for several platforms cheaper, and Chromium exists to help further that goal including, if necessary, being packaged up and shipped with those apps (Electron).
by xp84
5/5/2026 at 9:02:36 PM
There is a link elsewhere in this comment tree addressing all of that:by llbbdd
5/5/2026 at 9:13:46 PM
Google's marketing for their latest new browser feature nobody asked for shouldn't be taken at face value. Somebody outside Google needs to provide a well-reasoned assessment of the feature proposal.And having skimmed that page, it really doesn't answer most of the important questions. Are other browsers expected to ship Google's model, or put a different model behind the API that Google has documented as being specifically for Gemini Nano?
by wtallis
5/5/2026 at 9:33:29 PM
> Somebody outside Google needs to provide a well-reasoned assessment of the feature proposal.I'm sure that exists already, I've personally been waiting for some version of this to make it into browsers since like GPT 3.5. Every day on HN there is conversation about the tradeoffs of local vs. hosted models; the uses this API is intended for are perfectly within the capabilities of local models.
> And having skimmed that page, it really doesn't answer most of the important questions. Are other browsers expected to ship Google's model, or put a different model behind the API that Google has documented as being specifically for Gemini Nano?
Most of this is answered under the tag "Intent to Experiment" and the associated link. It's not a mandate that they're forcing on the web today, it's a public experiment intended in part to solicit feedback for a potential spec: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/6uBwi...
by llbbdd
5/5/2026 at 9:39:48 PM
> Most of this is answered under the tag "Intent to Experiment" and the associated link. It's not a mandate that they're forcing on the web today, it's a public experiment intended in part to solicit feedback for a potential spec: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/6uBwi...That does pretty much settle the question: if it's still just an experiment, Google should be asking for consent and web developers should not be assuming that this is the future of browsers, and nobody should be acting like this is a foregone conclusion.
by wtallis
5/6/2026 at 4:16:54 PM
I for one run a small Scripture-study web app that makes use of this on Chrome browsers when available to provide summarizations of long commentary articles. I'm also looking to use it to power topical search.I allow free open access to the content, as blocking it behind an account signup doesn't sit right ethically—it should be open and free for everyone.
The issue there is that there's no way to easily secure the API from being hammered by bad actors. (Due to the often-controversial response many have to Scripture, apps like these draw special kinds of negative attention.) You can set rate limits, but people can still abuse those, just to try to burn your money. I can get by for free (or relatively cheap, fully paid out-of-pocket as none of this is monetized) on Vercel/Netlify/etc, but inference is expensive, and a prime target for those trying to cause trouble.
If in the future the web exposes local "foundation" models that web apps can assume are present, that would open up great possibilities like these for indie devs like myself. Being able to offer useful and compelling features without worrying about abuse would be nice. That's my point.
by syndeo
5/5/2026 at 8:49:33 PM
> really useful for web devs to have access to a local modelI’m not opposed to this. I don’t want Google, an advertising quasi monopoly, to be auto-installing its own AIs on everyone’s computers.
by JumpCrisscross
5/6/2026 at 4:07:17 PM
Totally fair. Depends on how it's used, really.If it's to allow the web apps I use to work with more privacy, or to enable smaller/indie players (that can't easily afford to burn a bunch of API tokens for every user) to offer some basic AI-based features in their web apps, then I'm all for that.
This is the whole appeal of Apple's Foundation models on iOS too.
by syndeo
5/5/2026 at 8:01:19 PM
I think it falls more into the category of needing consent like a crypto miner would. If I use a piece of software to do X and it begins using more resources to do Y that can be a serious issue and is at the heart of this discussion.by ddtaylor
5/5/2026 at 8:29:06 PM
A crypto miner needs consent because it burns your battery and CPU power with no benefit to you. This AI model would only be used when you invoke it so the only problem is disk space, which the comment you're replying to acknowledges as a point of issue.by ezfe
5/5/2026 at 8:41:50 PM
Or some website decides for you that you now want to talk to your local AI chatbot using google chrome prompt api.by J-Kuhn
5/5/2026 at 9:11:30 PM
> This AI model would only be used when you invoke itYou sure about that? How explicit is the invocation? assuming it’s only run when the user does something (big assumption), does the user know clicking that summarize button is going to bog their system down and crank up their electricity use?
by kennywinker
5/5/2026 at 9:28:12 PM
Indeed. Trusting that it will only be processing the user's queries - as opposed to, say, becoming part of a distributed grid of AI processing nodes - isn't a bet I'd be willing to place much money on.by robinsonb5
5/5/2026 at 10:34:15 PM
You would be right if there's a popup box with two buttons appearing before installing the model and before every time it's used by some site.Button 1: "Stop the AI now to save X GB of RAM".
Button 2: "Erase all browser AI to save X GB of RAM and Y GB of disk"
This isn't asking for consent, it's simply informing the user about what oversized resources are optional and providing an honest way to save them.
The only alternative to that is formal consent.
by bigbadfeline
5/5/2026 at 8:43:33 PM
A crypto miner generates revenue needed to run the service, similar to ads.by OsrsNeedsf2P
5/5/2026 at 9:36:55 PM
Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Java installed an ask.com toolbar without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it.by knollimar
5/5/2026 at 10:37:06 PM
wellackshually the bloatware explicitly asked for consent. There was a checkbox at the end of the EULA asking you "I also don't agree to not install the ask.com toolbar. You wouldn't do that, would you?". There is a state of that checkbox which would not install the toolbar, because, as you know, it's not part of the software I'm trying to install. That state, however, is left as an exercise for the decompiler. :)Though I kinda agree that framing it as "consent" feels a bit off even if I myself would say no if only Chrome had the courtesy to ask. What icks me more is a 4GB[1] blob that has no relevance to the primary business of being a web browser; this is basically the IE anti-trust issue all over again. And it's an experimental feature! Under saner policies this thing would be a plugin from "Google Chrome Labs".
[1] I found weights.bin in Ubuntu 22.04 Chrome v147.0.7727.137 but it's "only" 2.7GB. Still, my ick stands.
by yallpendantools
5/6/2026 at 1:24:11 AM
I thought the issue with Java was that checkmark would check itself on update?I was trying to draw that parallel but maybe I'm misremembering
by knollimar
5/6/2026 at 9:27:54 AM
that's not true. ask.com nonsese did ask consent and it was trivial to uninstall.by xxs
5/5/2026 at 9:02:35 PM
Even Microsoft doesn't install a spellcheck dictionary unprompted; that happens when a user/admin goes into the app configuration and changes the language support options.by tremon
5/5/2026 at 11:59:26 PM
Hey if people could go for their pitchforks and torches over Apple giving them a free U2 album that ate up limited device storage space,we have every right to be upset at Google's audacity to suddenly gobble up 4 fucking GB
Also from the same webiste, Claude installing spyware: https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/anthropic-spyware/
but discussion about that seems to have been suppressed on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Anthropic+spyware
by Razengan
5/6/2026 at 6:58:29 AM
That was an even more ridiculous post. It wasn't spyware, it was a messaging bridge being installed for exactly the purpose it was intended. It was Claude Desktop installing a bridge that would allow Claude browser plugins to communicate with it. It was only used if the user had installed the browser plugin, and all it did was grant that plugin access to the app that had installed it!by ascorbic
5/6/2026 at 8:53:38 AM
So it's a backdoor to bypass the browser sandbox. Spyware is an apt label for that.by account42
5/6/2026 at 11:55:58 AM
It's not a backdoor: it's using a feature for the purpose for which it was designed. It's not granting plugins access to anything except itselfby ascorbic
5/6/2026 at 2:32:51 PM
It's the sheer gall of doing shit like that on my system without asking me. Creating a shitload of files to modify the settings of OTHER apps, wtaf?I asked Codex to look into it: https://i.imgur.com/lvOjR0x.png
by Razengan
5/6/2026 at 6:45:16 AM
I agree to install it, but I don’t agree to automatic updates. The bigger problem is, I can hardly find where to disable Google’s automatic updates. In the end, I just locked the file permissions to stop that virus-like auto-update program from running.by ZetsuBouKyo
5/6/2026 at 6:50:04 AM
Auto-updating browsers is one of the best advances in the web dev space in the past decade. I find it hard to believe that anyone who did web development before evergreen browsers became a thing would ever disagree.by ascorbic
5/6/2026 at 9:23:43 AM
I think automatic updates that offer no easy way to refuse are completely unreasonable.Can you imagine going to see a doctor, and in the middle of your appointment, the doctor drags you into the operating room to automatically update your body?
That's roughly how I feel about automatic updates. If you apply the concept of automatic updates to any industry outside of software, it would very easily be illegal. But strangely, this concept is considered legal when it comes to software.
by ZetsuBouKyo
5/6/2026 at 8:43:17 AM
Best advances for whom? Lazy web developers?Considering that most websites are optimized to just barely run on what the developers are targeting, letting them target the "state of the art" instead of what came installed on grandmas machine is been a huge negative for website efficiency and thus average user experience, not to mention global resource waste.
by account42
5/6/2026 at 11:57:07 AM
Web developers, users who want don't want security issues in their browser, and anyone who wants consistent rendering of sitesby ascorbic
5/7/2026 at 7:06:40 AM
> and anyone who wants consistent rendering of sitesYeah, that's where you lose me. The people who want to guarantee pixel-perfect rendering of web sites tend to be the same people who feel entitled to run their code on my machine as part of delivering their site, who prioritize their brand identity over my accessibility settings, who want to build their complex web app UI with no respect for the conventions of my chosen operating system. My browser should not be an ally to them; it should be taking my side in those conflicts.
by wtallis
5/6/2026 at 5:27:56 AM
But then they should state that minimum size of Chrome is 5-6GB (lol, OS size). Sure this feature should be installed by informing the user what are the pros/cons; just installing without asking - means that you are using user's traffic (huge for mobile, for example) and disk (quite a large part) without notice, which is probably a bit shady.by 0x49d1
5/5/2026 at 10:08:12 PM
If Rockstar games can be criticized for Hot Coffee then Chrome can absolutely be criticized for such bloat ware.by munk-a
5/6/2026 at 7:05:00 AM
Invoking a different case with bad logic doesn't make this one any stronger. I never understand this impulse, is it just "nuh uh!"?by Griffinsauce
5/6/2026 at 2:15:46 AM
That was also stupidby llbbdd
5/6/2026 at 3:50:02 AM
TIL, what a nutty situation.by iammattmurphy
5/5/2026 at 10:00:43 PM
Can't stand this kind of corporate apologism. It's one thing to disagree about whether this is a reasonable thing to do, but there's no need to additionally gaslight people about whether their category of grievance is even valid. Of course it's consent. They did it, without consent, that is a simple and factual statement. You consented to one thing (a browser) and not another (a giant AI file). And then the question with consent is whether the thing is something a person ought to seek consent for, which is entirely relative to how the person will feel about it. Installing a dictionary, probably not because it's small. Installing a 4GB file, probably yes. Obviously.by ajkjk
5/6/2026 at 8:05:52 AM
I think the disk space and bandwidth are what make consent needed, because it’s implied that the browser may download small pieces of data but the user would not expect such a large file be downloaded so it should check with themby circuit10
5/6/2026 at 5:50:39 AM
Under the EU AI act this REQUIRES disclosure. The user should be informed that the system is installing an LLMby register
5/5/2026 at 11:32:01 PM
i wonder how exactly it makes it harder to have a discussion. would it be okay to talk about spyware in terms of consent, or would that make it harder to discuss as well? can you think of a situation that it wouldn't be unhelpful to frame what software does in terms of consent?by pasquinelli
5/5/2026 at 9:23:57 PM
> You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate.You make a good case for much stronger laws and regulations on what such consent can legally allow.
> Framing it around consent is unnecessarily inflammatory and makes it harder to have a discussion, not easier.
Spoken like a Google shareholder. It’s wild to see this level of gaslighting being presented as some sort of reasonable position.
by antonvs
5/8/2026 at 4:02:13 AM
You could use the argument to justify installing functionally anything. From a key logger sending over everything you type to a crypto miner mining exclusively for google. I download a browser to browse the web. An AI agent is something else.by impalallama
5/5/2026 at 8:56:11 PM
You’re probably right in a literal technical sense, but a very large number of people (maybe most?) would choose “no” if properly informed and asked for consent, and lots of people are morally opposed even in principle to downloading a large AI model onto their computer. I’m not one of them, but they’re out there. So in a cultural sense, it is different.by thorum
5/5/2026 at 9:48:05 PM
What % of Chrome users (this is the default browser that nearly every 'normal person' uses) do you think is confident (and knowledgeable) enough to answer this quiz:
For each, indicate whether it's closest to: 4MB, 4GB, or 400GB:
1. One MP3 song.
2. A 2-hour movie streamed from Netflix at 4K
3. The capacity of this computer's SSD.
4. The free space on the SSD.
5. The whole of English Wikipedia not including images
6. a AAA game from 2010 with all its supporting files and DLC
7. a AAA game from 2026 with all its supporting files and DLC
8. The total of all software updates you installed last month
by xp84
5/5/2026 at 10:35:56 PM
DisagreeIt is consent - and its a pattern ubiquitous in tech.
Idk a random model being part of the software is not a given as much as things are trying to be pushed.
by foxes
5/5/2026 at 10:45:08 PM
Its not misleading, AI models (unlike English spelling check) has the potential to mine data on users and invade privacy all under the name of "training the model". I am very skeptical of AI models. Governments and big corp have the ability to exploit AI models and none of them a righteous for us to feel safe from a move like that.by abubakir1997
5/5/2026 at 10:48:05 PM
Local models exist as part of the solution to privacy invasion. Not saying google has never been nefarious, but the whole point of local models is that your data doesn't leave your device.by zachrip
5/11/2026 at 2:33:45 PM
Pretty sure from Google's standpoint, respecting privacy is a downside of local models. For them, the upside is using your compute rather than theirs.by mr_machine
5/7/2026 at 9:58:28 AM
Back in days this approach in software was called trojan horse and considered as malwareby jesterson
5/6/2026 at 10:35:52 PM
I have a 256 gb m1 mac. It's enough, but I uninstall apps and delete files ruthlessly when I don't need them and space is filling up. 4 GB of data which I don't want and didn't had in mind 2021 when I bought my computer is a big deal. Perhaps I should upgrade, maybe I'm behind and slow to do so, maybe 256 GB was a bad idea from the start. Maybe, but it has worked for 5 years and I don't have an urgent need to upgrade for any reason. For me 4 GB of something I would actively go and delete, just for it to be downloaded again and again is perhaps not non-consensual but absolutely disrespectfulby williamkemi
5/6/2026 at 1:48:23 AM
News from the year 2030: Google takes your credit card info, sells it on the black market for pennies and kicks you in the groin.Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Google stole your credit card info 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 physical abuse to use, but that's just a reasonable practical discussion to have. Framing it around consent is unnecessarily inflammatory and makes it harder to have a discussion, not easier.
by gessha
5/6/2026 at 1:58:18 AM
You're arguing in bad faith.by wavemode
5/6/2026 at 3:21:17 AM
It’s not in bad faith, it’s reductio as absurdum.Installation is not consent.
by gessha
5/6/2026 at 8:15:10 AM
This kind of unwanted software installed with a product you want used to be clearly considered malware. But these days software companies all think they own your computer and can do whatever they want.by account42
5/6/2026 at 1:38:20 AM
please don't defend this anymore.People installed an html client, not a backdoor into their computer.
by exabrial
5/6/2026 at 1:49:12 AM
Incorrect. Adding LLMs in the browser IS the backdoor into your computer.by _karie_
5/6/2026 at 3:27:17 AM
I disagree. Its a browser, damnit. Framing it as non-consentual AI is the right way. BTW, how much does Google pay you for this comment?by lynx97
5/5/2026 at 10:31:20 PM
They are abusing our trust. That's the issue.by stevenally
5/5/2026 at 10:44:30 PM
not just that, unfortunatelyThis is just today
"Tech giants Microsoft, Google and xAI say they will allow the United States federal government access to their new artificial intelligence models for national security testing." https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/5/5/microsoft-google-...
by oriettaxx
5/6/2026 at 1:12:44 PM
When you decide to build autoupdate features into your product, in some way you are building trust that you wont break expectations with your users. If google wants to pull a microsoft and try to force me to use another of their products I dont want to use, they are welcome to die in the same way as IE did.by eeixlk
5/6/2026 at 3:50:04 PM
Let's say i give zero fucks about gemini and "AI" in general, or in any case am not using google's offering.i'd rather have a popup asking me if i want to. I don't see firefox nagging me with GBs of data for local translations (arguably the only good use for everybody right now)
by monegator
5/6/2026 at 12:32:05 AM
Disagree. By your framing, might as well add a 4 Gb LLM to grep as an unasked for and downloaded option.by nobodyandproud
5/6/2026 at 5:31:17 AM
So… every software package you’ve installed has the right to consume an unlimited amount of your system’s resources? It’s an absurd argument. By that logic it can fill your hard drive, RAM, and max out your network bandwidth and the user would have somehow agreed.by user3939382
5/7/2026 at 4:39:35 PM
Its like when itunes for windows installed safari silently :/by neoyagami
5/6/2026 at 8:15:54 AM
Chrome's model is based on copyright infringement and court cases are pending regarding legality. Even if spellcheck dictionary was 4 GB, installing bloated but legal software is different.by gamerslexus
5/6/2026 at 10:48:07 AM
Incorrect. What you consent to, is the software, with its intended use and design. It is not consent to allowing the vendor to install what ever software, for what ever use case, of infinite size, forever. With your interpretation, MS could install a torrent client, child porn or what ever, and that cleraly shows that your interpretation leads to a reductio ad absurdum.When I download a web browser, it is reasonable to assume a piece of software that allows me to view web pages. Not an AI model.
The correct way to handle this, is for the vendor to announce the feature, the size and capacity required, and offer an opt-in, and not an opt-out.
This is beyond dispute.
by abc123abc123
5/6/2026 at 2:09:03 PM
> This is beyond dispute.My top-level comment has stayed the #1 comment on this post since I wrote it, and currently has over 300 upvotes. In fact, it is probably my most upvoted comment of all time, which is quite the surprise to me!
So it is extremely clear this is not "beyond dispute". A valid dispute can exist even if you're personally not happy about it.
by crazygringo
5/5/2026 at 7:58:25 PM
A spellchecker is a standard function of a text program.Since when is an AI part of the browser?
On top it’s another abuse of their market domination. What if users prefer other models?
by croes
5/5/2026 at 8:07:16 PM
By that reasoning, any novel/cutting-edge addition to a browser or other software is wrong? Every standard was new at some point.by TulliusCicero
5/5/2026 at 9:26:52 PM
The question of whether web browsers will one day be expected to normally include an LLM is not at all relevant to the situation at hand, where that absolutely is not the expected or typical behavior of a browser. Google should be asking for consent now even if they expect in several years time to be able to presume consent for this.by wtallis
5/5/2026 at 10:03:14 PM
So the principle is that any as of yet non-standard addition to software needs explicit consent from the user?by TulliusCicero
5/5/2026 at 11:47:45 PM
Major feature updates require consent, yes. Automatic updates are for bug fixes and security patches. It is disrespectful to the user to automatically deploy any update that changes the UI without warning or consent. I like my toolbar buttons to stay where I left them.by wtallis
5/5/2026 at 9:05:05 PM
> By that reasoning, any novel/cutting-edge addition to a browser or other software is wrong?This is IME the default position on HN. Seemingly a complete showcase of the appropriate scope of web technology can be found at http://info.cern.ch.
by llbbdd
5/5/2026 at 10:56:49 PM
I am against built-in VPN for the same reason I am against this. There is nothing novel or cutting edge about them. Any browser could have done it back in 2003, but they didn't do it for a reason.Of course, it's not like any of this matters in the end.
by fg137
5/6/2026 at 12:39:29 AM
Any addition that has nothing to do with the purpose of the program is wrong.That why ERPs added CRM and DMS functionalities, CRM added DMS and ERP features and DMS got messenger parts.
Of course those new functions can’t compete with the programs made for these functions in the first place and at the end of the day even the main functionality got worse.
Here is the additional point that Google enforces their own model without asking.
Usually programs with additional features give you an option page to select/deselect unwanted features
by croes
5/5/2026 at 8:43:56 PM
At least Word lets me choose which dictionaries I want to install during its installation. With an estimate on how much disk space it will take.by J-Kuhn
5/5/2026 at 11:47:34 PM
There was a point in time when a spellchecker was not a standard function of a text program, and a spellcheck dictionary would have been considered a large file to include with that kind of software.I'm not a fan of Google's actions here, but I do think it's possible that at some future time we'll say, "but a local AI model is a standard function of a web browser."
by hoppyhoppy2
5/6/2026 at 12:39:24 AM
> at some future time we'll say, "but a local AI model is a standard function of a web browser.And before that point ask the user for consent.
It’s not that hard.
If you make a sudden big change, ask for consent.
by croes
5/6/2026 at 9:44:13 AM
Disagreed; it's not a download you'd expect and it's also at least an order or two of magnitude than you'd expect to find reasonable for browsing a page.I have a 2GB mobile data plan. If I was using Chrome, then some site triggers the Prompt API, that will cause Chrome to not only wipe out my data plan, but need 2 of my data plans. I don't find this reasonable.
This is exactly a consent problem, because I'm not denying it might be a useful feature, but it should be at the user's own informed choice. The fact that Chrome developers don't appear to see this might be due to them living in a bubble where they've never had to think about the costs.
by cataflutter
5/5/2026 at 8:36:51 PM
Except spellcheck is a reasonably foreseeable part of a word processor. An AI model isn't really a common component of a typical web browser.by ferngodfather
5/5/2026 at 9:23:41 PM
i think if google can show that they know what it does and able to contain it then sure, it's a tool they have power over. if not then I don't see how it is being contained by the termsby alliao
5/6/2026 at 1:03:07 PM
Yes plus there is lot of confusion; the author is citing ePrivacy and GDPR that are about PIIs, not at all about consenting to an install.by derfurth
5/6/2026 at 1:46:54 AM
hey i found google ceo here!by iberator
5/5/2026 at 9:29:36 PM
Yeah, no. I installed a browser, I expect it to install the required components for it to work _as a browser_. I do not need a local AI model for it to do that. If there are features that need that, fine, but I expect it to at the very least ask permission since those are absolutely not required functions. It’s like if Word installed a bunch CAD modeling software in the background. There’s just no way it needs that to function for it’s primary purpose.by roblh
5/6/2026 at 3:15:42 AM
you are being very disingenuous. there are certain expectations from a software vendor. taking things into extreme, if something install malware as an update on your computer, is it not a silly claim that it is free for vendor to do so?by itemize123
5/8/2026 at 1:02:41 AM
Misguided?Apt install tells what it's gonna do. That's the standard to measure against.
Corporations have become entitled. Like the op i am sick of it.
by scrubs
5/6/2026 at 1:08:50 AM
"You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it."Were the terms something like
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/chromium/+/refs/h...
"11.1 The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services."
https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/consent/
"Where should the consent request go?
Consent information must be easily identifiable by the user. It should be presented separately from any terms and conditions."
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
"You cannot rely on silence, inactivity, pre-ticked boxes, opt-out boxes, default settings or a blanket acceptance of your terms and conditions."
https://www.edpb.europa.eu/sites/default/files/files/file1/e...
"The element free implies real choice and control for data subjects. As a general rule, the GDPR prescribes that if the data subject has no real choice, feels compelled to consent or will endure negative consequences if they do not consent, then consent will not be valid.13 If consent is bundled up as a non-negotiable part of terms and conditions it is presumed not to have been freely given."
https://www.dpo-consulting.com/blog/gdpr-data-consent
"GDPR Article 7 further tightens consent. It requires clear requests (separate from general terms), a right to withdraw at any time, and documentation to demonstrate that consent was validly obtained. In short, you must prove that a person knowingly opted in. Records of data consent (who, when, how) are mandatory so that you can show regulators you followed GDPR consent requirements."
"You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding a banana and the entire jungle." - Joe Armstrong
You installed a banana with autoupdates enabled by default. Therefore you consented to installing a gorilla and an entire jungle
Anyway, joking aside, what's missing from this blog post is discussion of potential remedies for the alleged violations
It may be acceptable to Google to violate GDPR, etc. if the remedies enforced are merely a "cost of doing business" and not a threat to business success
by 1vuio0pswjnm7
5/6/2026 at 11:52:25 AM
First of all I want to thank you for your intelligent and reasoned post. As the author of the article in question, I have been mostly shocked at how many people are excusing this behaviour and playing Google Apologist.Now to answer your question on the remedies. I didn't put them in this article because I covered them in another article that went viral a week or so earlier (the first reference in the Google article). The Google article was already a long read, I didn't want to repeat information I had already posted elsewhere.
As for my actions - well I will take the same actions I took against Anthropic.
I am currently preparing two legal complaints:
The first is under the GDPR and ePrivacy Directive here in the EU and will be sent to the IDPC (Information and Data Protection Commissioner) who will then initiate a Cross Border investigation with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (Google is "established" in Ireland for the purpose of GDPR) for the GDPR aspects and conduct their own investigation on the ePrivacy violations.
The second will be a criminal complaint against Google under Chapter 9 of the Maltese Criminal Code for alteration of the configuration of my device (Google remotely flipped a profile flag to enable the download which I witnessed in real time and have logs for) and for unauthorised access and use of my computer (to download and redownload the model) under computer misuse and access statutes (think CFAA in the US and how it was used against Aaron Swartz if you are looking for a way to file a criminal complaint against Google for this - the arguments used against Swartz are just as applicable to Google here).
So again, thanks for the post, it was nice to read someone actually understanding (unlike Reddit where it seems they do anything but read what they are talking about despite being called Reddit).
I also want to take this opportunity to thank everyone else in this thread for their time and comments and to YC for hosting the discussion.
Also my apologies for the 503's some people got yesterday (and thanks for posting mirrors) my blog runs on my home server and I had the rate limit set too low (I increased it once I saw the messages on here and it seemed to have fixed it).
Now that said - wait until you see what I am publishing next week (the project I was working on when I discovered this), it makes this look like child's play...
by AlexanderHanff
5/6/2026 at 6:15:38 PM
Framing another person's opinion as silly is sillyby RobRivera
5/5/2026 at 8:30:56 PM
[dead]by picsao
5/6/2026 at 2:48:22 PM
[dead]by ccvannorman
5/5/2026 at 8:11:59 PM
[dead]by soupspaces
5/6/2026 at 10:52:00 PM
[dead]by bixxie09
5/5/2026 at 7:57:50 PM
You're missing that this is anti-AI activismby wahnfrieden
5/5/2026 at 8:00:53 PM
We should be actively anti-AI being part of a web browser just like that though.by nvr219
5/6/2026 at 8:07:12 AM
Why? The AI assistance in Chrome dev tools is really useful. And I also use Google AI mode all the time.by tjansen
5/5/2026 at 9:52:39 PM
Sure, but what's the point of obfuscating that?This article is activism. The re-framing of software that you install intentionally being about breaking your 'consent' is ideological and incendiary. It implies that this is evil. It isn't.
by easterncalculus
5/5/2026 at 8:11:13 PM
Please stop assuming everyone thinks like you. If I can replace even something like translate with a local model that's just a single thing, off the top of my head, that could potentially benefit. I see no reason why these experiments should not be taking place.by hparadiz
5/5/2026 at 8:22:20 PM
And the reason they can't do something as simple and easy as ask for consent is...?by greggoB
5/5/2026 at 8:25:48 PM
You provide consent by using the software.by hparadiz
5/5/2026 at 8:44:54 PM
You consent by reading this comment.by J-Kuhn
5/6/2026 at 4:58:19 PM
You joke, but that's how all of FAANG sees things: By using Chrome or ChromeOS, you agree to the Google Terms of Service located at https://policies.google.com/terms and these Google Chrome and ChromeOS Additional Terms of Service.
by bigyabai
5/6/2026 at 7:36:20 PM
My statement was literal. Legally.by hparadiz
5/7/2026 at 9:45:35 AM
Still has the same vibe as "she did consent by wearing such a short skirt".by J-Kuhn
5/6/2026 at 8:18:40 PM
This doesn't explain why it is beyond their ability to expressly ask for it, or notify the user in any way. Very literal example of the one not precluding the other.by greggoB
5/6/2026 at 8:26:02 PM
Same reason the iPhone doesn't ask you which App Store you want to use. If you disagreed with the default choice, you'd be using another phone.That's how technology is nowadays, unfortunately. Pick the tribe you want to support, and watch them blatantly disregard every standard and convention of modern society. Your best bet is to personally divest from these ecosystems and advocate for their regulation and dissolution, if you think it's bad.
by bigyabai
5/7/2026 at 7:53:26 AM
I understand where you're coming from, but what you're describing is why they don't want or have to, not why they can't, which is specifically what I'm focused on as I think we otherwise just take these being the same thing as a baseline assumption, which is obviously not the case.We need to be clear that this isn't a technical limitation on the part of these companies, and them choosing to pursue this modus operandi is purely for their own convenience at the cost of the user.
by greggoB
5/5/2026 at 9:06:23 PM
Imagine Amazon deciding to take out $1000 from a credit card just because you use it to buy a phone case. Because you "consented" by using their marketplace.by skydhash
5/6/2026 at 8:12:09 AM
They probably didn't even think about that. Admittedly, 4GB is quite big, but if I were in their shoes, I would have expected that people are thrilled about using a local LLM instead of sending data to a cloud-based LLM.I am still stunned that there are people who hate AI so much that they have a problem with the weights of an LLM being on their computer. To me, that sounds rather esoteric.
by tjansen
5/6/2026 at 9:52:30 AM
Disk space is one thing, but the actual download size is higher than some people's data allowances altogether! It baffles me that a lot of people don't seem to be aware of thisby cataflutter
5/5/2026 at 10:32:25 PM
I am not assuming everyone thinks like me, I’m advocating for my position.by nvr219
5/5/2026 at 10:30:37 PM
It's not about AI. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't be ok with eg a calculator app shipping a 4GB word processor.by pier25
5/6/2026 at 12:15:46 PM
I am a computer scientist and have studied AI for over 30 years, I use AI every single day and I speak all over the world about the responsible and ethical use of AI... not sure how that makes me anti-ai?I am a privacy activist and I strongly object to corporations reaching in to my device, changing the configuration and installing things I never asked for without telling me or requesting my permission. If that makes me anti-ai, then it is a hat I will wear with pride, thanks.
If you don't like that the law protects my position as opposed to your's, perhaps you could lobby to have the law changed, just as I have done for the last 20 years to make these laws stronger?
by AlexanderHanff
5/5/2026 at 8:51:46 PM
We don't have AI. We have language models trained by rapacious companies on copyrighted material with no concern for copyright violations and with a penchant for intentionally anthropomorhizing their models.I'm an anti corporate malfeasance activist.
Hacker News and it's underemployed and underpaid user base gets these two confused all the time. I assure you, your tolerance for language models, or your willingness to use them, will have _zero_ impacts on your pay scale in the coming decade.
Finally you should be aware that Google markets this addition as an "anti fraud" and "anti spam" feature. They should have to justify that, I shouldn't have to justify my expectations as a consumer.
by themafia
5/5/2026 at 9:02:24 PM
It's not a copyright violation if courts have ruled it's notI have no pay scale to worry about, I own the software I build and don't rely on wages
by wahnfrieden
5/6/2026 at 4:48:48 AM
> It's not a copyright violation if courts have ruled it's notCourts can't rule aprioi on civil issues. I would not expect the current status quo to count for anything.
> I own the software I build and don't rely on wages
Cool. So now everyone with $200 is your competition. It seems like a fools paradise to me.
by themafia
5/6/2026 at 8:58:31 AM
It is if we as a society decide it is.by account42
5/5/2026 at 8:00:10 PM
Maybe it’s pro-browser activism.A browser should render web pages not bring its own AI
by croes
5/5/2026 at 8:06:45 PM
Yeah, it's already egregious how resource intensive browsing the web can be, between the browser and the content its loading. Why should we just accept that Google will force another performance hit by loading up an AI model as well?by brendoelfrendo
5/6/2026 at 8:56:22 AM
I guess they took all the Chrome RAM usage memes as feature requests.by account42
5/5/2026 at 8:01:26 PM
It is? Or is it just a pragmatic dislike?by detritus
5/5/2026 at 8:26:02 AM
If Chrome has the #optimization-guide-on-device-model and #prompt-api-for-gemini-nano flags enabled, either because it's part of some Origin Trial / Early Stable Release or something, then web pages will have access to the new Prompt API which allows any webpage to initiate the (one-time) download of the ~2.7 GiB CPU or ~4.0 GiB GPU model using LanguageModel.create()https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api
When Chrome 148 releases tomorrow, this will be the default behaviour on desktop.
To download, it should check for 22 GiB free disk space on the volume where your Chrome data dir is, and at least double the model size of free space in your tmp dir.
by scriptsmith
5/5/2026 at 2:59:34 PM
First the tabs came for the RAM and i did not protest, for i had plenty. Then they came for the chip and i did not protest, for it was dark silcon anyway. Then they came for the HDD.by 21asdffdsa12
5/5/2026 at 8:02:14 PM
And then they made the ram and ssd so expensive :)by oaiey
5/5/2026 at 8:03:32 PM
I am curious if it reuses the LLM across all tabs, hard to imagine most machines can boot up 1-2 of any 4gb model unless its a more powerful system.by bearjaws
5/5/2026 at 9:05:09 PM
I think it obviously will, what would be the benefit to spinning up more than one copy?by nsvd2
5/5/2026 at 9:45:34 PM
It should only need to load one copy of the weights, but each tab/site will need a separate context and KV cache.by wtallis
5/5/2026 at 6:12:04 PM
Okay, but the browser is basically the computer for most people.by doctorpangloss
5/5/2026 at 3:28:30 PM
Told ya.by underlipton
5/5/2026 at 2:31:49 PM
The more severe problem is that Google installs model weight files on a per-user basis, meaning Chrome occupies 4 more GB of space for every OS user on your device.by maxloh
5/5/2026 at 2:49:09 PM
The company I work at has several environments and hundreds of VDI users in each environment. Chrome is the default browser in all of them. By my rough napkin math, this one small change by Google will eat up at least 15 terabytes of new disk space in total. (I sure hope we are using deduplication at the physical storage layer...)by bityard
5/5/2026 at 2:59:33 PM
It's fine. Network and disk space are free, right?by throwway120385
5/5/2026 at 7:55:08 PM
Compared to human labor it is.by charcircuit
5/6/2026 at 9:08:03 AM
Only because those who can save on the labor are not paying for the increased resource use in the first place.by account42
5/9/2026 at 4:07:49 PM
Serious question: why do you use Google Chrome in the first place, when there are better alternatives, e.g. Brave (crypto stuff could be easily disabled) or Vivaldi, both with adblocker?by niutech
5/5/2026 at 11:53:35 PM
Shouldn't the filesystem be set to encrypt everything before it hits the physical storage layer?by tbrownaw
5/5/2026 at 7:37:57 PM
Thankfully deduplication is a thing ;)by dburkland
5/5/2026 at 4:00:16 PM
I certainly hope you don't automatically update.by Pay08
5/5/2026 at 7:27:58 PM
Does your place review every line of every update patch note? Do you think you would catch this implication?by TheRealDunkirk
5/5/2026 at 6:15:56 PM
Does each playwright (or similar automation system) count as a different user, and does it keep the model around ?If yes, it's an interesting API to call when a AI crawler hit your website.
by BiteCode_dev
5/6/2026 at 12:36:17 PM
For every profile.by emegeve83
5/5/2026 at 4:15:21 PM
4GB, $0.10 (whatever the HD price) that is the equivalent of a High School level intelligent brain that can perform many cognitive tasks (and in the future even PhD level intelligence) for free?Oh, the horror!!!
Wait, let me pay my HVAC guy $500 he deserved because he came all the way from his home to replace a fuse
by ai-x
5/5/2026 at 4:42:54 PM
It doesn't make sense to apply wholesale prices for mass storage. People are running Chrome on specific devices that they already own. Storage is not fungible in this way.by recursive
5/5/2026 at 4:59:57 PM
If you’re pissed you had to pay your HVAC guy to drive to your house and do something you think is trivial, why didn’t you do it yourself?by beedeebeedee
5/6/2026 at 9:12:01 AM
As the saying goes, gp didn't pay $500 to have the fuse replaced, he paid $500 for the training and experience that was required to know that the fuse had to be replaced.by account42
5/5/2026 at 8:31:56 PM
> 4GB, $0.10 (whatever the HD price) that is the equivalent of a High School level intelligent brain that can perform many cognitive tasks for free?This is better than my current solution of an actual human with masters degreed intelligence performing all my cognitive tasks for free how? I mean, i'm the first to admit i'm extremely lazy and even i'm over here like "really??"
by froggit
5/5/2026 at 6:40:30 PM
> Wait, let me pay my HVAC guy $500 he deserved because he came all the way from his home to replace a fuseRight, because its totally something an LLM can do, right?
by hansmayer
5/5/2026 at 5:37:53 PM
Here is your google brain on your device, whether you want it or not.by verisimi
5/5/2026 at 6:12:51 PM
I don’t think you understand what “free” meansby mcmcmc
5/5/2026 at 5:45:47 PM
Tell that to Apple, I'm sure they will allow me to pay $0.025/GB for additional storage on my Macbook /sby SkiFire13
5/5/2026 at 6:05:57 PM
It's annoyingly imposible to add more disk space to laptops. I think mine is soldered.by tayo42
5/6/2026 at 9:13:57 AM
Apple laptops maybe. In many others it's just a normal M.2 NVMe module behind a screwed on bottom case plate.by account42
5/5/2026 at 3:16:45 PM
You can already trigger a 2 GB model download with the Summarizer API[0], which is already shipped in Chrome. Summarizer.create()
I think this is a distinct model from the Prompt API, since the other shipped AI APIs use fine tuned models.
by sheept
5/5/2026 at 5:55:43 PM
Both of them say they use Gemini Nano.by rafram
5/5/2026 at 4:36:27 PM
So now we're up to 6 GBby crumpled
5/5/2026 at 7:28:30 PM
Per userby entropicdrifter
5/6/2026 at 1:19:57 PM
Also note the Mozilla standards position on this API: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1213#i...Or this summary on its status:
> Mozilla: Opposed
> WebKit: Opposed
> Microsoft: Several concerns
> W3C TAG: Several concerns
> Developers: Mostly negative
From https://mastodon.social/@jaffathecake/116527007495775507
by Vinnl
5/5/2026 at 8:05:32 PM
The problem is that some of us are still on connections that charge per GB in rural areas. Here in Montana it's very common to pay about $0.25 per GB regardless of how much you use, so this is a $1 additional cost per desktop device. Places like public school districts have hundreds of computers and this will be somewhat significant for them.by ddtaylor
5/6/2026 at 3:05:42 AM
I was thinking a similar thing. Many of our customers have purpose use computers that rarely see physical infrastructure internet, but need a modern browser (many chose Chrome on their own, we never recommended it).They're going to get blasted with cellular data charges when they fire up their computer in the field.
by marklubi
5/5/2026 at 11:28:41 PM
Google's updater service also currently ignores the windows 11 metered connection hint. It will gladly download that model over your cell connection even if you have a data cap.This is infuriating behavior.
Silicon Valley must wake up and understand the entire world does not live like them.
by McGlockenshire
5/6/2026 at 7:11:59 PM
They live in a bubble and not a lot of the surrounding world makes it in to them. I know it is hyperbolic, but I lived there for a while and I stand by that opinion.by bjelkeman-again
5/5/2026 at 9:07:52 AM
It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it? What is the on-board model used for?by wuschel
5/5/2026 at 10:03:14 AM
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.
by 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 11:29:58 AM
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.
by imglorp
5/5/2026 at 12:59:40 PM
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.by reactordev
5/5/2026 at 1:12:59 PM
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.What did we expect when they dropped "don't be evil" from their company values?
by aftbit
5/5/2026 at 1:29:53 PM
A claim about as useful then as it is now. They never wanted to be anything but, once Sergei left. The Schmidt era had them publicly declare one thing while doing something else entirely behind the curtain.by reactordev
5/5/2026 at 1:44:44 PM
They were corporate evil from day 1. The rest was just PR slogans, and playing the good guy as long as you don't need to squeeze profits.by coldtea
5/6/2026 at 4:33:45 AM
If Google were focused on surveillance, why haven't they been collecting keystroke data (like grammarly) for years?by xnx
5/5/2026 at 2:06:43 PM
Isn’t it really “pushing a feature to their products”?by philip1209
5/5/2026 at 2:40:42 PM
Not when you are appropriating 2GB or more of space for that feature.by reactordev
5/5/2026 at 11:43:09 AM
I don't trust them either, but the same Google makes Gemma 4 available to run as locally and privately as you want, and those models are pretty amazing for their size.by akoboldfrying
5/5/2026 at 4:15:30 PM
Both can be true: they give a nice local model so you find it useful AND the chrome harness captures every token in and out for exfiltration.by imglorp
5/5/2026 at 9:26:30 PM
LLMs are costing Google a ton of money in compute and storage right now. If they can farm any of that off to the users, it makes economical sense.But yes, there is a 100% chance that logs will get sent back to Google too.
by marcta
5/6/2026 at 10:16:11 AM
> farmOoh, this is interesting. There's nothing stopping them from sending jobs down to local machines. That's some 3 billion nodes. We went through this with coin mining and spam botting.
Nothing stopping it except your ire if it's discovered.
by imglorp
5/5/2026 at 1:45:42 PM
> But how can you trust Google to autoinstall one on your machineWhy are AI models something I'd be uniquely unable to trust Google to install, compared all the other code included in Chrome updates? Is your point just that you shouldn't trust Chrome in general?
by Ajedi32
5/5/2026 at 7:12:41 PM
Yes I would not trust Google or chrome. They have a history of class action lawsuits for doing shady things to users. Enabling them to condense data on your machine and transmit it however they want, should they choose too is suspect to me.by 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 7:12:25 PM
Google is probably still sucking up the contents of your LLM requests even with the model running locally.by jm4
5/5/2026 at 3:37:04 PM
Yeah, so unclear why yer again everyone is so quickly running for the pitchforks & torches. The model doesn't do anything, it's just a sandbox.I'm really tired of such overinflated ridiculousness shrillness against Google. Yes there are very real tensions to this company and their as business is scary as heck.
But folks don't seem capable of processing duality, don't seem to be able to do much but ad-hominem until they pass out. Its really so exhausting having such empty energy charging in every single time, and it keeps obstructing any ability to think straight or assess.
by jauntywundrkind
5/5/2026 at 9:10:56 PM
> The model doesn't do anything, it's just a sandbox.Doesn't that make it worse? They forced everyone to download 4GB of crap for nothing. They could have done one of two things:
(1) bundle the model with the application so you can tell ahead of time you're signing up for 4GB of bandwidth usage or
(2) make downloading the model some kind of opt-in thing.
Either of those would have worked. Just because you can easily tolerate 4GB of unplanned bandwidth usage doesn't mean everyone who can't is wrong.
by jcgrillo
5/5/2026 at 6:33:36 PM
I was waiting for Google to pull a local LLM onto Chrome/Android devices. It opens up some revenue streams that weren't easily possible before: for example the often memed "I was talking about cigars with my wife one single time and now all I see are adsense ads for cigars" gets much easier with a local model doing speech to text and topic classification.by pbmonster
5/5/2026 at 8:36:46 PM
> Yeah, so unclear why yer again everyone is so quickly running for the pitchforks & torches.Cause everyone loves a good bonfire and a fresh hot roast.
by froggit
5/5/2026 at 7:16:19 PM
The point is that what you're "sick of" isn't actually authentic human thought, but in reality you're responding to a recent european-driven propaganda campaign with the goal of deriding anything and everything related to US tech.by thegrim33
5/5/2026 at 1:42:56 PM
All that matters is some MBA product manager at Google was celebrated for shipping this. Hooray!by wildrhythms
5/5/2026 at 2:34:26 PM
Everyone who implemented or approved this should be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030). If I was on a jury, I wouldn't hesitate to send them to prison where they belong.by elphinstone
5/5/2026 at 6:55:03 PM
A fair and impartial jury is a fundamental part of freedom. I genuinely cannot believe that we have been reduced to wanting to destroy the jury system to punish companies we don’t agree with. At this point, this is less activism and more weaponized disrespect for fundamental freedoms.by hluska
5/5/2026 at 9:34:22 PM
[dead]by zelphirkalt
5/5/2026 at 7:45:07 PM
What is the principle you’re using here?by ahupp
5/5/2026 at 11:31:11 AM
Which is why I uninstalled Chrome a (short...) while ago and my life went on unbothered.by soco
5/5/2026 at 3:48:55 PM
I am amused when people fret about not using Chrome. I get it but… I have literally NEVER used Chrome. Perhaps I just don’t know what I am missing but the web seems to work just fine for me without it?by raddan
5/5/2026 at 4:58:40 PM
Touché…by Danox
5/5/2026 at 12:32:19 PM
Half of the reason to use local AI is to circumvent the censorship that Google, OpenAI and so on have. I don't want this Google crap on my computer.by tsss
5/5/2026 at 5:20:36 PM
> 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.Really? I'm a total amateur when it comes to doing anything with local models but I tried a few in this range using ollama at this point, and they didn't seem to know much about anything, and I couldn't figure out how to get them to search the web or run other tools, so that was where the experiment ended.
A small local model that can use bash would be a bit of a game-changer for me.
by safety1st
5/5/2026 at 7:01:13 PM
Local models are improving quickly so if you keep an eye open you’ll find something soon enough. But from experience, I’ll warn you that local models can lose the plot very quickly. Their little self arguments when they get stuck usually come down to:- It failed? This must be a mistake, I’ll try it again. It failed? This must be a mistake, I’ll try it again because then I will complete the task (repeat about every six seconds until you rescue it).
- You know, the best way to deal with a permissions problem is to erase the entire system. That’ll definitely solve those pesky permissions and I’ll complete the task.
by hluska
5/5/2026 at 7:42:12 PM
The latest small models are now reliable enough at simple tools like web search I think. It's just afaik none of the user friendly harnesses like ollama or LMStudio have a real one-click setup flow for this. You'll need to download models and do a fair bit of tool configuration.by svachalek
5/6/2026 at 4:36:02 AM
Gemini CLI can use bash and run on the Gemma local model.by xnx
5/5/2026 at 9:25:25 AM
It's based on Gemma 3n, and it's not the best.I find it works fine for simple classification, translation, interpretation of images & audio. It can write longer prose, but it's pretty bad.
It can also write text in the format of a JSON schema or regexp for anything you might want to do with structured data.
by scriptsmith
5/5/2026 at 11:22:00 AM
I wonder why they’re using Gemma 3 and not Gemma 4?by Wowfunhappy
5/5/2026 at 11:32:40 AM
Google has been trialling the Prompt API in chrome for the over a year, so before Gemma 4 existed. But they are indicating they'll move to Gemma 4: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/iR6R7...by scriptsmith
5/5/2026 at 11:41:31 AM
So that the big news in non-tech news sites will be the update. Thus ensuring that this is received in a positive light.by dotancohen
5/5/2026 at 11:29:10 AM
It'll probably update to that without telling you at some point.by andy_ppp
5/5/2026 at 2:10:44 PM
I find models of this size (not tested this one specifically) at being very good at simple data extraction from user input. Think about things like parsing date and time of an event from a description or parsing a human-typed description of a repeating event rule.by kevincox
5/5/2026 at 4:49:29 PM
this is considered a large model. i think you might be surprised how many "small" models chrome has already pulled down on your disk.but to answer your question: one of the services that uses a small model: PermissionsAIv4
""" Use the Permission Predictions Service and the AIv4 model to surface permission notification requests using a quieter UI when the likelihood of the user granting the permission is predicted to be low. Requires `Make Searches and Browsing Better` to be enabled. – Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, Android """
by rmac
5/5/2026 at 5:21:58 PM
[dead]by nemomarx
5/5/2026 at 11:45:45 AM
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...
by michaelbuckbee
5/5/2026 at 12:42:59 PM
> on _every_ measure except for privacy it was worse than a free tier server hosted LLMWould you be able to compare this to other local models in it's class and a above that would fit consumer-grade hardware?
by gchamonlive
5/5/2026 at 1:57:41 PM
> It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it?Precedence for shipping models alongside consumer software.
Potentially without consent if it truly is a silent install.
by accrual
5/5/2026 at 3:54:54 PM
Something to do with serving more ads. My guess is they will use this to “better target” or to drain more information from you for their ads.by hightrix
5/5/2026 at 8:37:23 AM
Those two (and more) exist in chrome://flags in Chrome 147. I'm disabling them now, with the expectation that will prevent the new default.One option I'm leaving as default is "Use LiteRT-LM runtime for on-device model service inference." Any comment on that?
by tobylane
5/5/2026 at 11:24:22 AM
I'm on Chrome 147 too and disabled:"optimization-guide-on-device-model"
- Enables optimization guide on device
"prompt-api-for-gemini-nano"
- Prompt API for Gemini Nano
- Prompt API for Gemini Nano with Multimodal Input
and deleted weights.bin and the 2025.x folder in "OptGuideOnDeviceModel"
Will report if Chrome 148 downloads the model again.
by RaiausderDose
5/5/2026 at 11:38:50 AM
If you touch those files into existence and chown to root and chmod to 0, it shouldn’t be able to ever overwrite them right?by phs318u
5/5/2026 at 7:52:23 PM
You want to use chattr +i (make the empty file immutable)by sethops1
5/5/2026 at 11:48:03 AM
I'm on my phone now so I can't check if something has changed, but what you want to protect from change is the directory, not the files. A file can be deleted and created again if the process can write the directory.by pmontra
5/5/2026 at 11:44:18 AM
yeah, should work. Will try readonly on windows too.Now I can't see it anymore, but shouldn't the model be under chrome://on-device-internals/ -> model-status?
Maybe you can uninstall there too.
by RaiausderDose
5/5/2026 at 12:10:56 PM
thanks, went to flags in Vivaldi and just in case disabled all flags containing "gemini" and first five results for "model"by Markoff
5/5/2026 at 3:11:30 PM
maybe I was on the wrong side of the early release but I’ve deleted this model many times in the last year. I’ve had it for at least 12 months.by beaugunderson
5/8/2026 at 4:07:06 PM
it downloaded the model again...by RaiausderDose
5/5/2026 at 8:46:52 AM
Those flags will exist already, but will default to enabled in 148.That other flag is for using a different open-source inference engine to the (from what I can tell) closed-source one that's used by default.
by scriptsmith
5/5/2026 at 1:56:43 PM
[dead]by dpoloncsak
5/5/2026 at 9:54:22 PM
Searching about:flags for model comes up with a whole bunch:#omnibox-ml-url-scoring-model
#omnibox-on-device-tail-suggestions
#optimization-guide-on-device-model
#text-safety-classifier
#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano
#writer-api-for-gemini-nano
#rewriter-api-for-gemini-nano
#proofreader-api-for-gemini-nano
#summarizer-api-for-gemini-nano
#on-device-model-litert-lm-backend
Then around gemini but not caught by the search for models: #skills (maybe? I think this is implied by "gemini in chrome"?)
edit: I don't see a carte blanch AI disabling option. As much as I dislike Mozilla's growing obsession with AI, at least they give me a top level option to disable all AI stuff. I only keep Chrome around for occasional testing reasons.
by Twirrim
5/5/2026 at 9:10:30 PM
So my understanding of that is that the download happens only when sites call the Prompt API right?Because my Chrome stable has been updated to v148 now, and I don't see any AI models in my user profile folder. My profile size is only 328 MB, with the Code Cache subfolder occupying the most space (135 MB).
by d3Xt3r
5/5/2026 at 9:15:24 PM
In my understanding, yes. I wrote a blog post about some of the internals here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48028662by scriptsmith
5/6/2026 at 4:23:34 AM
I wrote a more detailed blog post here:by scriptsmith
5/5/2026 at 6:49:09 PM
Next step: Invoke the prompt API from within online ads and run a "p2p" AI inference provider which forwards incoming LLM queries to website visitors. :-)by codethief
5/5/2026 at 4:49:45 PM
This sounds perfectly reasonable. No objection from me.by jimmaswell
5/5/2026 at 11:40:35 PM
I believe webpages that use the API must request from the user via a system permissions dialogue to aces the prompt API, according the docs a few months ago.by jadbox
5/5/2026 at 11:46:59 PM
It can only be called after the user has interacted with the page, but there's no dialogue from the browserhttps://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/get-started#user-activa...
by scriptsmith
5/6/2026 at 7:38:37 PM
/dev/mapper/vg_system-arch 207G 192G 4,7G 98% /Just don't keep free space around :-D
by arendtio
5/6/2026 at 7:49:31 AM
Do you know if also Chromium has thesenfkags enabled?by madduci
5/6/2026 at 8:06:37 AM
Depends on where you get it. By default the flags will be enabled, but some packagers may choose to disable them. I haven't seen a major distro release chromium 148 yet.Weirdly though, chromium won't be able to actually use the model even though it can download it, because the inference engine is a closed-source blob.
https://adsm.dev/posts/prompt-api/#which-browsers-support-th...
by scriptsmith
5/6/2026 at 7:45:07 PM
I think it's great, LFG Chromium OSSby hzwanip
5/5/2026 at 4:41:12 PM
[dead]by BergAndCo
5/5/2026 at 9:49:39 PM
An extra 4GB per user on our NFS home file server is going to be a huge pain (several thousand students). And for our Windows lab machines, they end up in AppData\Local (which isn’t redirected for operational reasons) so we either leave the profiles in place and let them accumulate (suboptimal) or clear out the profiles as we normally do and let it redownload, over and over again.As much as I’m against unexpected 4GB bloat for an AI model, I’d much prefer it to install one copy, system-wide. 4GB per Windows or Linux lab machine, rather than a 4TB minimum load on our NFS server and 4GB downloads per user, per machine on our Windows labs.
by davb
5/5/2026 at 10:03:18 PM
Fellow sysadmin here. I'm glad to see somebody else thinking about the practical side of this.Google should know better. Chrome has local administrator permissions anyway (w/ its updater) so they should have installed a single copy for the entire machine.
It's not cool to give a damn about the people who keep mundane stuff like desktop infrastructure, file servers, etc, working, I guess. The wanton disregard to even talk to a single in-the-trenches corporate sysadmin seems like malice.
by EvanAnderson
5/5/2026 at 10:56:28 PM
Google has not ever cared about the real world implications of their browser decisions in the past. I can't say I'm surprised that they didn't start caring for this occasion.by bigstrat2003
5/6/2026 at 9:24:58 AM
I tend to deal with unwanted installations by creating a zero length file with the name (weights.bin) and remove all permissions from all users, taking the ownership as well. While the download and friends commence they fail to overwrite it.The tactic used to work even as prevention to common RPC exploits (viruses/worms) on windows as well (in the early 2000s).
by xxs
5/6/2026 at 12:07:22 PM
The zero size filed with the same name trick was the first thing I thought of as well.by alexpotato
5/6/2026 at 12:21:29 PM
Do you not have compression / deduplication on your nfs backing server ?by rapatel0
5/6/2026 at 1:52:41 AM
Conspiracy theory: making the browser bigger makes it harder to run large quantities of headless versions, for all the useful (but anti-Google) things that enables. I suspect this is directly tied to the ongoing ascent of verification laws and other pieces of the drive towards authoritarian dystopia. They're basically DDoS'ing providers of browser-VM services with this.by userbinator
5/5/2026 at 9:53:26 PM
Why not force a light-weight browser and prohibit Chrome?by qudiqudi
5/5/2026 at 10:04:39 PM
That would create vastly more support issues. You don't get to choose the software your users need.by EvanAnderson
5/5/2026 at 10:39:55 PM
Indeed. We look after a huge, very diverse set of users (university science faculty - many thousands in our faculty, but tens of thousands across all faculties and professional services teams). According to https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share Chrome has over 65% market share for desktops - not supporting Chrome would be overly restrictive.Our users interact with a huge array of internal and external sites and web apps, virtually all of which will be tested on Chrome. Our LMS, collaboration tools, internal apps, SIEM tooling, HR systems, ERP, knowledge exchange partner portals - it's all been tested on, and works with, Chrome. And we're not in a position to force thousands of vendors to make sure their applications are standards compliant and work in less popular browsers (as much as we might like to). Not to mention the deluge of tickets we'd be dealing with when incompatibilities arise; banning Chrome would cripple us.
Google have backed us into a corner with this one by making a careless default choice that takes advantage of their market dominance and forces us to work around their decision.
by davb
5/9/2026 at 7:31:04 PM
But Edge, Brave or Vivaldi are based on the same Chromium engine as Chrome.by niutech
5/10/2026 at 11:36:15 PM
I have had vendors refuse trouble reports from Edge because they only "support" Chrome. It's ridiculous but completely unsurprising to me.by EvanAnderson
5/6/2026 at 9:20:51 AM
Except IT does that all the time in most companies. You don't get to choose your own OS. You have to use Outlook and Teams in most windows shops. Good luck getting approval for an Office alternative.by account42
5/7/2026 at 4:44:20 AM
I wrote a fairly opinionated screed here but opted to delete it after I thought about it. I think I can summarize pretty succinctly: The business guides IT. Often cost reduction is the order of the day and, to that end, monocultures usually win out.by EvanAnderson
5/6/2026 at 12:29:03 AM
Because due to Google having a near-monopoly on the entire goddamn Internet, a shocking number of websites and services will refuse to work with non-chrome browsers.by estimator7292
5/6/2026 at 10:14:04 AM
Apart from two exceptions about 5 years ago, I've yet to encounter any of these sites in practice in Firefox.by breakingcups
5/9/2026 at 7:37:12 PM
E.g. Vivaldi is Chromium-based but doesn't include Nano Banana.by niutech
5/6/2026 at 4:57:08 AM
And even when they work with non-chrome browsers if you run into an issue, you won't be able to get it escalated without trying with chrome (or lying and saying you did, I suppose).by aidenn0
5/5/2026 at 11:55:25 AM
> Energy intensity of network data transfer: 0.06 kWh per GB, the mid-band of Pärssinen et al. (2018) "Environmental impact assessment of online advertising", Science of The Total Environment [14]. The paper reports a 0.04-0.10 kWh/GB range depending on the share of fixed-line vs mobile transfer and inclusion of end-user device energy. 0.06 is a defensible mid-point.2018? An estimate from 8 years ago is going to be off by a factor of 10 or so.
Not sure you'd get far with the legal arguments unless you're actually a lawyer. Too easy to misunderstand the jargon (i.e. the same reason why it's dangerous to use an LLM as your lawyer).
(As an aside, the whole thing reads to me like the style LLMs use; not saying for sure it was, just giving me those vibes).
by ben_w
5/5/2026 at 5:05:07 PM
This is the same guy who said that Claude Code was spyware because it makes a few Windows Registry keys [0]. I find it really hard to take him seriously.by jazzypants
5/5/2026 at 6:02:50 PM
Oh, one of those people. Gotcha. Back in the early days of my career (can't remember exactly, possibly 2010?) I tried making screensavers and gave them away on my website, someone followed me directly on twitter then tweeted to everyone that my screensavers were some kind of malware because… I'd named the main class as per the tutorial and somehow this looked scary.by ben_w
5/6/2026 at 2:06:02 AM
Main class? Tutorial? I feel like you're leaving out important details.by fluoridation
5/6/2026 at 6:03:21 AM
Not really important, but if you're interested, I followed some tutorial on how to make a MacOS screensaver back in the Objective-C days. MyMainWindow
by ben_w
5/5/2026 at 2:54:38 PM
0.04 to 0.1 kWh/GB is insane even for 2018 lol.I have gigabit internet (125 MB/s). This would imply when I'm downloading something I'm using 18 to 45 kW of electricity. Completely bonkers.
by kingstnap
5/6/2026 at 6:32:12 AM
It would also imply that it costs Google ~7¢ in only energy cost to deliver that file to you (using average EU energy costs), which is clearly non-sensical given the rates hyperscalers charge for network egress.Additionally, the cited number also conflates wired internet (low power consumption) with mobile internet (higher), even though this model is only being downloaded to Chrome Desktop AFAICT.
by fastball
5/5/2026 at 8:18:39 PM
I'd guess there is some offset power needed for keeping a "line" open. Like, 200 kB/s is not twice the power of 100?by rightbyte
5/5/2026 at 10:19:03 PM
When looking at the power consumption across the whole network path and not just a single link, most of the power draw is probably baseline static power costs of keeping all the routers and switches running. Which means that judging the impact of a download in terms of Watts per MB/s is a pretty bad way of analyzing this.by wtallis
5/5/2026 at 3:04:15 PM
Clearly you're charging an EV to drive a jar of microsd cards with your data back and forthby bastawhiz
5/5/2026 at 3:56:02 PM
1.8 to 4.5 kW.by gbgarbeb
5/5/2026 at 4:34:54 PM
This was my math:0.1 kWh * 3600s/hr = 360 kJ
360 kJ / 8s (time for 1 GB) = 45 kW
by kingstnap
5/5/2026 at 6:29:33 PM
Or, slightly more direct: .1kW*h/GB * .125GB/s * 3600s/h = 45kWThose are some goofy numbers. Obviously incorrect.
by polishTar
5/10/2026 at 3:55:36 PM
Oopsby gbgarbeb
5/5/2026 at 12:33:50 PM
You think the energy cost to transfer has dropped by 10 X in eight years? Why?by Schiendelman
5/5/2026 at 2:43:30 PM
Long term historical trend, lots of small tech improvements that add up, like all other tech. Some of it's how antennas are higher gain, which puts more of the energy in the path from one end of a line to the other and wasting less (affecting both cellular and WiFi standards over this period), some is improved compute reducing the cost of routing, but as with the improvements to chips and batteries and PV, the list of things is long and each one only contributes part of it.EDIT: got the maths very wrong with some other estimates, deleted them.
by ben_w
5/7/2026 at 6:13:38 PM
I can see a reduction of maybe 10% over 10 years on a per byte basis. My actual bet is that it's even. For every proposed reduction there's a new load balancing layer, a higher energy wireless standard…by Schiendelman
5/5/2026 at 2:17:16 PM
Seems reasonable to believe to me. The cost of a transfer is presumably calculated based on the base power cost of the transfer machinery, since I really doubt that a router or switch's power usage is linear with the amount of data it's transferring. The amount that an industrial router or switch (which is what 80-90% of the hops between you and Google are) has to have increased its bandwidth by around 10x over that time, and I doubt they have 10x'd their energy usage.by asdfasgasdgasdg
5/5/2026 at 7:52:56 PM
Eight years ago my internet was using a current over a copper wire. Now it's light through glass. The latter is much more efficient especially over longer distances.by radicalbyte
5/5/2026 at 9:20:56 PM
Eight years ago, your ISP was already on light over glass, they just didn't serve it that way to your house.by b40d-48b2-979e
5/8/2026 at 3:09:18 PM
When I was living in the UK the copper cable was 4.5km long. The reason I know that is because BT denied that there was any copper line installed. So I spoke to the building company who told me they installed the copper cables. Then I wrote a letter to my MP. With his help we got BT to conceed and they hooked us up.It was bad DSL but bad DSL is better than a 56k modem.
Nowadays DSL lines are anything from a few 100 meters to 1.5 - 2 kilometers. I don't know much about cable TV.
by radicalbyte
5/6/2026 at 1:18:28 PM
But processing and retranssmission of the data at every network node still takes energyby ChrisRR
5/7/2026 at 12:23:13 AM
And plenty of that hardware is more than ten years old.by Schiendelman
5/5/2026 at 12:34:08 PM
Agreed. Also, complaining about the climate impact of an AI model download while opening your post with an ai generated image is peak hypocrisy. Did not bother to read the rest.by Azkron
5/5/2026 at 11:15:00 AM
"Silently installs" is misleading. They are including a file in the package which is presumably related to the functionality of the software. I don't use chrome for a long list of reasons but it is not standard or expected to get consent for that.by doginasuit
5/5/2026 at 11:39:00 AM
There is, however, precedent for software alerting/asking the user to install “extras” or utility packs and showing the disk size that content will take up and even allowing the user to choose a location to store such things. Creative software does this all the time.There’s nothing stopping Google Chrome from doing something similar except, I suspect, Google knows or feels it will result in many fewer installs of its bloatware.
by etothet
5/5/2026 at 8:54:58 PM
That's a good point. "Downloads a 4GB LLM model without notice" would get a good amount of attention and be an accurate representation of the situation. The article undermines itself by misrepresenting the problem.by doginasuit
5/5/2026 at 1:54:53 PM
[flagged]by yieldcrv
5/5/2026 at 2:17:48 PM
Rage bait? It's a fact about how some software handles downloading extra content. This issue and how ads on the web are served are two separate issues.by etothet
5/5/2026 at 1:56:40 PM
I doubt many people here download any ads in a day.by gregoryl
5/5/2026 at 11:57:29 AM
“Silent” seems appropriate given it historically never required such a large storage requirement and the nature of the new feature seems entirely optional; and it’s happening silently as part of a normal upgrade.by rubyfan
5/5/2026 at 1:25:43 PM
> it's happening silently as part of a normal upgrade.No, this is not true. The large requirement comes after a user wants to use the feature, not as a part of the normal upgrade. If the user never engages with the feature, it's not downloaded.
by jasonlotito
5/5/2026 at 1:45:35 PM
According to above, it is triggered by the website calling the feature. The user might have no idea. That's not what consent looks likeby dweinus
5/5/2026 at 1:31:58 PM
> No, this is not true. The large requirement comes after a user wants to use the feature,The feature that didn't say it would cost you 4Gb, right?
by chrisjj
5/5/2026 at 1:48:11 PM
That's even more silent.by coldtea
5/5/2026 at 2:46:03 PM
Are you okay with a 1 GB chrome install suddenly becoming a 5 GB chrome install on all your machines, without your permission or knowledge, for functionality you may or may not want?by bityard
5/5/2026 at 3:24:44 PM
Yes because in their mind corporate power is the only thing that matters in our lives. Not what people want, but what Google wants is clearly the only thing that matters for them.It's a bizarre way of living your life.
by shimman
5/5/2026 at 8:57:50 PM
They aren’t wrong, though. There is no incentive for Google to do anything else if 75 % of web users keep using Chrome no matter what happens to it.by Diti
5/5/2026 at 6:51:38 PM
Isn't that what it always has done after caching a few weeks of websites?by postalrat
5/5/2026 at 6:58:13 PM
100%. "Researchers Discover Chrome Uses Your Hard Drive to Silently Make a Copy of Everything you Look At Online" is ominous and scary and also an accurate description of how caches work. There's enough scary and bad AI stuff to discuss without needing to use scare tactics.by CobrastanJorji
5/5/2026 at 8:02:26 PM
What part of rendering a web page needs Gemini?by croes
5/5/2026 at 9:12:53 PM
What part of rendering a web page needs a local disk cache?by CobrastanJorji
5/6/2026 at 12:35:06 AM
The part where you revisit or reload a siteby croes
5/6/2026 at 2:45:50 AM
Okay, then the part where I translate or extract text from an image or summarize a site is the part where I need Gemini.by CobrastanJorji
5/6/2026 at 9:12:56 AM
Everyone revisits or reloads a website. Not everyone uses the features you refer to, and I would guess it's a minority that does.by oneeyedpigeon
5/6/2026 at 9:02:04 AM
What part of rendering a site is text extraction or summary?Do you use a translation program to play browser games?
by croes
5/6/2026 at 3:57:01 AM
> the part where I need Gemini.This is like saying that the part of driving where you wash dishes is why you, personally, need a dishwasher in your car. There is no feature that would fail the challenge if you can always claim that you need it to render a web page.
Local disk cache is a standard and reasonable feature expected by the vast majority of browser users. You are being obtuse.
by albedoa
5/5/2026 at 8:01:34 PM
They are installing a software package nobody expects and which isn’t need to run a browser.by croes
5/5/2026 at 11:37:21 AM
Look at how many headlines indicated that something is silently happening. It's a weird trend at the moment.by SirFatty
5/5/2026 at 11:49:53 AM
We live in a tech world where it has become normalized that perfectly functioning software that you used to buy once and then got to use indefinitely suddenly receives an "update" to put previously existing functionality behind a pain subscription. The reasonable expectation people have is that an update fixes security bugs and maybe includes a few optimizations.So no, I don't think it's a weird trend at all that people start describing software as "silently" doing things when trust in automatic updates of software (a thing that software silently does) has deservedly gone down the drain in the last few years.
by vanderZwan
5/5/2026 at 1:34:25 PM
Its a salesman's foot in the door, except its near-invisible and gets to walk round your house.by chrisjj
5/5/2026 at 1:49:16 PM
No weird: accurate. It IS a silent install.I wanted a browser, not an LLM.
by coldtea
5/5/2026 at 6:53:23 PM
Completely missing the point.by SirFatty
5/5/2026 at 8:59:03 PM
What is this link supposed to be doing? Does it need desktop Chrome to run, maybe?by Diti
5/5/2026 at 1:46:21 PM
If it gets the clicks it sticks.by WarmWash
5/5/2026 at 1:29:56 PM
> "Silently installs" is misleading. They are including a file in the package which is presumably related to the functionality of the software.Related... to the functionality of feeding the same profit and loss account, right?
by chrisjj
5/5/2026 at 2:21:31 PM
"functionality of the software" has already been mentioned hahaby cowboylowrez
5/6/2026 at 12:27:12 PM
Who paid you to write thisby ahmadtbk
5/5/2026 at 11:38:36 AM
Then what is your definition of "installing" exactly? Are you going to split hairs about it not being a separate program being installed and running in the background, but weights being used by code that is run inside the browser? Because honestly, I don't think there's any significant difference from the user's perspective here. Other than the fact that doing the latter bypasses the need to get permission to install a new program. Which makes it an even worse violation, in a way, since it undermines the trust that the browser as a platform is just a browser.A 4 GiB model has nothing to do with the functionality of a web browser. It is something forced on users without their consent.
Of course that's what we get for giving the benefit of doubt to the company that insisted on learning the wrong things from the Google Buzz fiasco.
by vanderZwan
5/5/2026 at 12:01:43 PM
Install does convey something more involved than including a file, that's not splitting hairs. It is not uncommon for software to include malware that runs independently of the software you expected, and the headline is clickbait that taps into those concerns. I'm here for the concerns about bloat. "Downloads" would have been the right term to use but it doesn't sound as scary.by doginasuit
5/5/2026 at 4:20:05 PM
> A 4 GiB model has nothing to do with the functionality of a web browser.Problem is, nor do half its T&Cs. What we thought was a web browser turns out to be a Google content delivery vehicle - and controlled by Google, not the target users.
by chrisjj
5/5/2026 at 1:28:13 PM
> A 4 GiB model has nothing to do with the functionality of a web browser. It is something forced on users without their consent.This does not happen. The model is not downloaded unless the user intentionally uses the feature that requires it. Then it's downloaded at that point.
by jasonlotito
5/5/2026 at 1:51:36 PM
Unless the user uses a feature.That that feature (a) requires a local LLM, (b) will install a multi-GB download without telling the user, all happen without any explicit user consent.
by coldtea
5/5/2026 at 3:12:50 PM
untrue, I’ve deleted it many times in the last year. I don’t think this is new.by beaugunderson
5/5/2026 at 10:07:42 PM
ah, yeah, first showed up in April of 2025by beaugunderson
5/5/2026 at 12:30:52 PM
This feels deliberately reductiveby functionmouse
5/6/2026 at 2:18:38 AM
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 priority is AI at this time.
Sysadmins should take notice.
If the network is ~65% chrome and thus deemed painful, take the gradual approach. Do not push chrome on new devices or users. Watch that problem slowly go away.
by IG_Semmelweiss
5/9/2026 at 7:46:50 PM
For GMaps alternative, there are Here WeGo or Bing Maps. For Android, there are Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch. For Chrome, there are Brave or Vivaldi (Blink-based). Google is not irreplaceable.by niutech
5/6/2026 at 5:48:58 AM
> most alternatives, until recently, were not greatCurious to know, what viable alternatives did you discover?
by bean469
5/6/2026 at 5:51:24 PM
OrganicMaps is a fantastic alternative - based on OSM databy heyamitkmr
5/6/2026 at 11:20:37 AM
Gmaps WV while using VPN. Download from Fdroid.Its miles ahead of something like Osmand , which i really, really, tried to like for a year, but its a UX disaster (i could never ever figure it out)
by IG_Semmelweiss
5/6/2026 at 1:25:15 PM
Is that a webview loading Gmaps? That's not what I expected to call "degoogling", haha.The OSMand UX is clearly not made for casual use, but Comaps is basically the main user-friendly application. It is missing a couple of commonly-used features though, most notably traffic information, which of course Google bases on data collected from its users.
by Vinnl
5/6/2026 at 7:43:40 PM
Better use it now, because it has a best-before date of 2026/2027 (depending on when Google will enforce the developer identity registration).by arendtio
5/6/2026 at 9:41:18 PM
I have used OsmAnd for maybe 10y. And it has been surprisingly goodSeveral countries. Works offline. Saves the journey taken
Not the best at finding places sometimes. Food places and ratings still has to be google or trip avisor, but those are very relative too. Wherever you go the key e some preparation anyway
For direction I think it is rock solid
by guilhas
5/6/2026 at 6:03:03 AM
Kagi Maps isn't bad, it's slow but POIs are there with enough data.by nesk_
5/6/2026 at 5:33:19 AM
Wait, Chrome has been around for 15 years? Damn I'm old.by Legend2440
5/5/2026 at 9:11:06 PM
This is what I've done after spending some time to look into it, this is for Linux Desktop:Delete Chrome's silent 4 GB AI model file and AI
In Chrome, go to: chrome://flags
Search for and Disable these:
Enables optimization guide on device
Prompt API for Gemini Nano
AI Mode
Click the Settings (gear icon).
Go to AI Innovations and uncheck Enable AI assistance.
sudo rm -rf ~/.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
sudo rm -rf ~/.config/googlechrome/Default/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
sudo touch ~/.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
sudo chmod 400 ~/.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
sudo touch ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
sudo chmod 400 ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
sudo chown root:root ~/.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
sudo chown root:root ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
ls -l ~/.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
ls -l ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/OptGuideOnDeviceModelby newsoftheday
5/6/2026 at 9:24:51 AM
That's a lot of steps compared to using a browser that doesn't treat your computer as their property.by account42
5/6/2026 at 3:15:40 PM
I just learned from this Reddit post about the On-Device AI setting:https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1t536x6/psa_chrome_...
"On-device AI" can be disabled. At least, it is in Chrome on Linux Desktop.
by newsoftheday
5/5/2026 at 9:32:47 PM
DevTools uses a server side model, and only after you opt in with explicit consent.by hashseed
5/6/2026 at 3:02:09 AM
Or accidentally trigger it because you're using a key binding you've used for 15 years that, upon hitting an unexpected consent screen, triggers the consent button.by eclipticplane
5/6/2026 at 2:59:21 AM
FWIW, first two sections worked for Chrome on Windows.by newman314
5/5/2026 at 4:21:43 PM
This might be worth it if Gemma4 E2B were a good model, but honestly it's absolutely useless in all our testing without further training and finetuning, and those aren't usecases that are fit for normal web browser use such that one would care to support it by adding such overly broad and expensive infrastructure to make it happen.Gemma 4 E4B is a much better model, but it's too large to simply download and run everywhere.
IMHO, this is jumping the gun. Google's going through a lot of effort to release a model that will give everyone a very poor first impression of what on-device models are capable of, souring it for everyone for a long time afterwards. It would be better to wait until a smaller, better model ships before doing this.
by ComputerGuru
5/5/2026 at 4:49:28 PM
Most users aren't even going to know that this is here. Web developers will expose this capability to the user. The devs will have to determine if the model is delivering what they need.It's good to have something to work with if these Web APIs are going to be part of a standard. I suppose this means that ALL the browser vendors are likely to implement something
by crumpled
5/5/2026 at 6:40:02 PM
> I suppose this means that ALL the browser vendors are likely to implement somethingMozilla has taken a strong stand against the prompt api.
by ComputerGuru
5/5/2026 at 7:57:16 PM
I had to dig around to see where they took the stand.https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1213#i...
Mozilla makes great points. Even if the API is model agnostic, which it ought to be designed as from the very beginning to even be considered a spec, models can act vastly different.
Mozilla didn't say this but the user should at least be presented an option to choose which model (at least once) starting from day one, even if your browser only has one option available. That's assuming a universe where Google plans on actually being concerned about standards adoption.
by crumpled
5/5/2026 at 11:19:54 PM
Mozilla classically has taken a very strong stand against ever holding true to their values so we'll probably get one from them in a few months.by tick_tock_tick
5/5/2026 at 10:13:12 PM
> Google's going through a lot of effort to release a model that will give everyone a very poor first impression of what on-device models are capable of, souring it for everyone for a long time afterwards.I wonder what that will do for the competition between hosted genai and local models...
by grayhatter
5/5/2026 at 10:32:22 AM
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.by toyg
5/5/2026 at 10:45:28 AM
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.
by wolvoleo
5/5/2026 at 11:47:52 AM
Don't forget the metric saying "99.97% of user have installed this" even though less than 1% of users know it exists, much less use itby sidewndr46
5/5/2026 at 2:41:55 PM
Or "25% of users have used this in the last month" when it's made so easy to accidentally trigger it that the real usage is a few % at most.by zamadatix
5/5/2026 at 4:13:08 PM
it could easily be "after we replaced an existing UI element with a button to launch this instead, adoption increased 9001% month over month"by sidewndr46
5/5/2026 at 1:01:55 PM
at this point you're barely the product either. You're more a passive platform for them to execute their strategy on.by lkramer
5/5/2026 at 1:27:38 PM
Totally agreed. I was thinking about how to word it but I was giving up.But I would consider us users to be more like an asset on their balance sheet. Not something they would care about the opinion of.
by wolvoleo
5/5/2026 at 7:15:15 PM
More like livestock tbh. Only instead of wool or meat or eggs being harvested, it’s mindshare and attention that they depend onby mcmcmc
5/5/2026 at 11:25:00 PM
Makes me think of that scene of Neo waking up from the Matrix the first time and seeing the "battery pods"... yeah...by amatecha
5/6/2026 at 8:33:44 AM
That's a good comparison to how I feel these days.by wolvoleo
5/5/2026 at 6:41:34 PM
> Then they can't brag to the shareholders about Chrome being "AI Powered"Or at least justify the hundreds of billions they are burning
by pier25
5/5/2026 at 11:04:42 AM
I was not happy when they added Gemini to the top bar, in its own place that nothing else gets to use.by data-ottawa
5/5/2026 at 3:53:41 PM
They want to force the prompt API into being a defacto standard without getting buy in by the rest of the web standards body. Having it on by default serves this goal.by notnullorvoid
5/5/2026 at 11:49:31 AM
I think a local AI model is appreciated, but it being bundled and executed through Chrome, I expect that more or less all data get exfiltrated by Google.They simply read your mails, how would you expect there to be anything resembling decency in a company like that? It is the ad business.
Bad thing is that people still use gmail.
by raxxorraxor
5/5/2026 at 4:28:18 PM
Doesn't google already extract every single letter you put into the address bar as you type?The idea that the model is local is just Privacy Washing. What's the chance they aren't capturing your prompts somehow? For "Telemetry" so they can triage bugs of course!
by mrguyorama
5/5/2026 at 7:46:28 PM
Is it really privacy washing? This author assumed people would think AI was local but I don't know anyone like that. Everyone I know who's not deep in tech only uses big hosted models and isn't aware that anything else exists.I'm more inclined to think it's cost unloading. Move their cloud GPU costs to your desktop.
by svachalek
5/5/2026 at 2:19:44 PM
Presumably they think the fraction of their userbase who cares about this would be too small to justify the expense of adding a warning message. The mere existence of a warning message implies that there is something to be worried or concerned, about, a position they probably do not endorse or accept.by asdfasgasdgasdg
5/5/2026 at 11:17:26 AM
Because we must get what the tech overlords want us to get, not what we want to get.by ssss11
5/5/2026 at 8:19:36 AM
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.by TheServitor
5/5/2026 at 8:35:14 AM
Your word might be of petabytes of traffic. Some people have slow lines. Some people have metered Internet subscriptions.Not everyone has access to the same infrastructure you have.
by salviati
5/5/2026 at 8:51:51 AM
Or just tethering abroad with an esim data plan... Just opening chrome would deplete your quota and leave you stranded. Google you are sick!by SilverSurfer972
5/5/2026 at 9:40:41 AM
Surely it will wait when the connection is marked as metered.by efdee
5/5/2026 at 10:14:23 AM
I definitely trust Google's team (and large trillion dollar companies with sufficient resources to do this) to make reasonable choices for their users... said, perhaps, someone ever? Certainly not me.(I wanted to write something far snarkier and sarcastic but getting annoyed at google is like getting annoyed at a lawnmower/Oracle. That plus HN guidelines.)
by user_7832
5/6/2026 at 9:28:26 AM
A tethered connection often just looks like a normal WiFi access point to the computer.by account42
5/5/2026 at 11:30:28 PM
Nope! The Chrome updater on Windows 11 ignores the metered flag.by McGlockenshire
5/5/2026 at 1:25:20 PM
Yeah I have to run ski race software with slow and intermittent internet. It is things like this that can wreck the race and bankrupt the small club if we have to refund entry fees to an entire field. It really is brutal and real. Looking at you windows update and now Google and Chrome.by swader999
5/5/2026 at 2:45:06 PM
yeah 3 bucks a gig here for quite a while, finally got a kinda sorta unlimited connection recently. I scripted up a meter of sorts to watch my traffic and its amazing how much is just trash. video advertising of any sort is awful. there were many sites that if I just forgot about them in the browser window they would happily reload periodically and trash my days budget lol, then using "links" for just reading really shows off how many websites just reject you for not having javascript.now I'm working on upgrading my computer lol
by cowboylowrez
5/5/2026 at 11:16:38 AM
It's somewhat known that Chrome isn't catering to those users. They aim to deliver feature-rich experiences rather than be the de-facto browser for resource-constrained devices.by derangedHorse
5/5/2026 at 8:18:57 PM
I'm not sure if this is satire, but chrome literally powers the web. It IS the web browser market. Chrome caters to everyone.by s3p
5/5/2026 at 8:59:05 AM
Okay, but that's still not an environmental disaster.by handoflixue
5/5/2026 at 8:35:05 AM
I do not agree: I live by the sea and this is exactly the answer I get when I talk about trash in the sea. I personally appreciate even more that kind of "stretch" then the privacy one (which could be another "stretch" on getting closer to 1984 scenario)by oriettaxx
5/5/2026 at 9:41:56 AM
I guess you can write an article about every new gigabyte released, and we can use more gigabytes talking about it, but other than that I don't see that any one gigabyte of software I don't want is especially more noteworthy than any other gigabyte of software I don't want.An xBox game can be 50+ gigs. Millions of gamers. Fire up the presses!
I'm not at all saying nothing matters so we shouldn't care. I just disagree about the utility of calling out specific things out of proportion to their place in the climate crisis. Tackle AI, yes, and fast fashion and cars, and ... that one change to Chrome? I guess if that's where you want to put your energy, Sisyphus.
by TheServitor
5/5/2026 at 11:46:32 AM
I don't see that any one gigabyte of software I don't want is especially more
noteworthy than any other gigabyte of software I don't want.
by b40d-48b2-979e
5/5/2026 at 10:40:03 PM
[dead]by HDBaseT
5/5/2026 at 12:01:39 PM
> An xBox game can be 50+ gigs.In my experience a game worth playing never exceeded 1 (one) gig in size.
It is only incompetent creators that feel the need to bury their incompetence under gigabytes of irrelevance.
by lstodd
5/5/2026 at 5:09:50 PM
The last 5 years of Game of The Year (Astro Bot (2024), Baldur's Gate 3 (2023), Elden Ring (2022), It Takes Two (2021), and The Last of Us Part II (2020)) are all nearly 45 GB+. All of them are incredible games spanning a vast series of game style (coop puzzle, solo platformer, stealth, ARPG, RPG) and animation.Stardew Valley, universally acclaimed and not graphically intensive at all, still takes up nearly 2 GB of space.
Your view on games is not grounded in the reality of modern gaming.
by darkwizard42
5/5/2026 at 11:13:26 AM
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 judgement, but this seem pretty significant to me.
[1]: https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/global-chrome-user-base/ [2]: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-str... [3]: https://www.anthesisgroup.com/insights/what-exactly-is-1-ton...
by x3ro
5/5/2026 at 12:35:42 PM
This is about the same as each of those people streaming a movie to their TV. There's no there there.by Schiendelman
5/5/2026 at 8:55:27 PM
They do that anyway, so it's in addition to that which is the parent's point.by newsoftheday
5/7/2026 at 6:11:53 PM
Did you notice when your streaming files went from 1.5 GB for a movie to 6 GB for a movie? I didn't. Almost no one does. And no one writes blog posts like this about the data usage.by Schiendelman
5/5/2026 at 8:06:54 PM
But that is a choice of an individual. Not a central place rolling it out.by oaiey
5/5/2026 at 12:41:56 PM
> but lets assume 29 grams of CO2e per GB29 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.
by altcognito
5/5/2026 at 1:18:55 PM
Most folks have >400Mbps connections now (ignoring frame overhead, unsaturated pipes, TCP window size scaling time, etc.)? That’s amazing news.by oefrha
5/5/2026 at 2:06:45 PM
Other comparisons:About equal to a major iOS update at 8 GB x 1.5B.
Netflix and YouTube together are perhaps around 200EB/month.
by user34283
5/5/2026 at 12:36:47 PM
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.by semiquaver
5/5/2026 at 1:26:39 PM
Yes and this is just the first version of this model. As if there won't be an update (complete replacement) of the model every few months.by swader999
5/5/2026 at 8:33:53 AM
What is a lot of traffic to you?2.5 million downloads of 4 GB are 10 PB of traffic.
I think there are be a lot more than 2.5 million Chrome users in the world.
by tthu1
5/5/2026 at 10:45:21 AM
More data moves in your average playstation system update than that. Steam probably transmits more in a morning than thatby bcjdjsndon
5/5/2026 at 10:51:13 AM
There are far more Google Chrome users than probably PlayStation & Steam users combined.Also, someone installing Steam is going to expect large downloads, hell, the platform tells you the size as you're about to start the download.
I don't think anyone expects a browser to suddenly download 4GB, let alone behind their backs!
by DarkUranium
5/5/2026 at 11:17:43 AM
Have you ever watched a 2 hour lecture on Youtube? Next time check the memory consumption of the open tab.by derangedHorse
5/5/2026 at 12:11:30 PM
A 720x400 two-soundtrack rip of first season of 'On becoming god in central Florida' is only 5.5G. That's 10 episodes. Now what you were saying about 2-hour lectures?by lstodd
5/5/2026 at 10:44:00 PM
Valve published some numbers of this.11.42 petabytes per hour, and roughly 190,000 GB per minute and 100 exabytes delivered in 2025.
by HDBaseT
5/5/2026 at 8:35:57 AM
You only download it when some JS requests it for the first time, most people will never have it.by Jleagle
5/5/2026 at 9:28:02 AM
I never intentionally used any AI features in Chrome but first was made aware of the models when my disk was running out of space. I investigated with a disk usage tool and found I had multiple versions of the model in my Chrome directory taking up ~12gb. This was about half a year ago and maybe I was in a bad experiment or something but it's definitely not opt in or user visible. Less tech savvy people will have a really hard time understanding why their disk space is running low.by bluehex
5/5/2026 at 9:53:44 AM
> You only download it when some JS requests it for the first time, most people will never have it.i certainly never activated it willfully. i use Chrome only as a fallback testing platform for web dev - a handful of times per month - yet both Chrome Stable and Chrome Unstable had installed this 4GB monstrosity in my home dir. 8GB of junk i'd never used. Both have since been uninstalled and replaced with Chromium.
by sgbeal
5/5/2026 at 8:49:00 AM
Do you think this will not be part of some google product? On top of their normal agenda, this seems perfectly suited for them to push their AI models. So if you use anything from Google via Chrome, I would expect that this will end up on your device sooner or later.by sigmoid10
5/5/2026 at 8:45:02 AM
You estimate more or less than 2.5 million?If you google OptGuideOnDeviceModel, there’s already a lot of results of people asking what it is an how they can delete them. It’s not some kind of obscure niche feature.
I wonder when the first crypto miner-like malware appears that offloads model usage to the client computers.
by tthu1
5/5/2026 at 9:03:41 AM
I suspect it's not that simple. Last week I noticed I already had it downloaded on one of my devices, even though I'm sure the number of websites already using this API is miniscule.by bakugo
5/5/2026 at 11:21:19 AM
Wikipedia say 3.6 billion Chrome users.by acchow
5/5/2026 at 8:35:24 AM
There are multiple problems here.For one, not everyone in this world lives on high bandwidth unmetered connections. In Germany, you got a lot of people still running on 16 MBit/s ADSL, that's half an hour worth of full load just for AI garbage. With the average 50 MBit/s, it's still 10 minutes. For those running on hotspots - be it their phone with often enough 10 GB or less on your average data plan or train hotspots that cut you off after 200MB - the situation is similarly dire.
The other thing is storage. I got a nominally 256GB MacBook Air. Of these 256 GB, easily 50GB are already gone for macOS itself, swap, Recovery and everything that macOS doesn't store as part of the immutable partition (such as, you guessed it, its own AI models). Taking up 2% of the disk space without consent is definitely Not Cool.
by mschuster91
5/5/2026 at 9:07:19 AM
Another angle is the processing cost, I assume Google is seeking to offload the computation for whatever features this covers from their own data centers to end users. On the scale of billions that's probably measurable and from google's side worth doing whether the users is paying for the service or not, and each of them will have more power usage with some reduced battery life on portable devices. At that scale I'd also wonder about efficiency based on what proportion of end users are using AI or running it on CPU/GPU/NPU.by keyringlight
5/5/2026 at 9:00:25 AM
Amazing how many people missed the "environmental disaster" part of this post and are talking about personal inconvenience.Sorry folks, your low bandwidth situation is not, in fact, a climate change emergency.
by handoflixue
5/5/2026 at 3:14:16 PM
And adding climate hysteria here diminishes the climate change argument generally. It's like "the boy who cried wolf".by peder
5/5/2026 at 11:30:27 AM
Whilst I am sceptical about Google in this space I do think it is a move in the right direction to do more locally and actually use the space modern machines have on device.by 7952
5/5/2026 at 9:05:37 AM
The same old individualistic fallacy [1] of highlighting individual effects to hide global effects, all while compromising user privacy. In reality this will be continuous million of devices downloading these useless weight files.[1] Used since forever by the Tobacco & Pharmaceutical, Fossil Fuels & Climate, Food & Diet Industries.
by zekrioca
5/5/2026 at 9:28:13 AM
60.000.000 kg ÷ 1.000.000.000 useris about 60 gramms of co2 per user?
by frnz
5/5/2026 at 10:25:19 AM
Which ullustrates that humanity has reached such numbers that the smallest collective change has an enormous impact.by CamelCaseCondo
5/5/2026 at 10:47:45 AM
How do you propose maintaining the living conditions you've become accustomed to without the system we have currently, as shit as it is?by bcjdjsndon
5/5/2026 at 11:13:08 AM
There’s the problem: we want change without giving up the things we’re accustomed to. We’re locked in.by CamelCaseCondo
5/5/2026 at 11:34:59 AM
By "the things we're accustomed to" you mean food, jobs, healthcare, education?by throw310822
5/5/2026 at 12:22:47 PM
You had food as a barbarian. Job wasn't needed because you weren't enslaved by your feudal lord, healthcare and education being the only benefits of civilization... largely benefits for the rich and not the peasantry I might addby bcjdjsndon
5/5/2026 at 7:09:17 PM
The basis of so much of Microsoft's complacency (and why the MB Neo was such a nuke to the entry-level laptop market).It's pretty terrible how much this kind of dynamic rules over tech. I'm not a 'capitalist', but god damn if competition isn't the most important thing to prevent total enshittification.
by liminis
5/5/2026 at 12:02:43 PM
I would more worry about storage space on some laptops with pretty small SSDs like 192-256GB of official capacity prior installing Windows, 4GB of that is already pretty significant part of storage space for something which should be opt-in.by Markoff
5/5/2026 at 10:19:22 AM
4Gb times 2,000,000,000 chrome installs gives us 8,000 petabytes. Are we allowed to worry now?by thrance
5/5/2026 at 8:30:14 AM
The next Netflix breakout show will burn this planet to the grounds :)by perks_12
5/5/2026 at 8:53:52 AM
Netflix does not store 4gb on your drive...by ekianjo
5/5/2026 at 1:28:51 PM
and people on very limited bandwidth and/or speed don't watch Netflix (or do so at most at 1080p) and if they watch netflix they are fine with clogging up their internet as it isn't some random backround download hindering what they want to do but what they are actively doingby dathinab
5/5/2026 at 10:23:34 AM
It does if it triggers this download.by a96
5/5/2026 at 8:56:46 AM
What is petabytes if not 4GB at Chrome userbase scale?by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 8:52:44 AM
Its unsollicited. Not everyone has fiber eitherby ekianjo
5/5/2026 at 1:42:39 PM
not just fiber, e.g. Netflix requires "only" (reliable) ~15Mb/s for a 4k stream, that means most people in most countries feel little difference between ~25 Mb/s and 1Gb/s in their "every day" usage. Sure it's a huge difference if you download a 80GiB AAA game, or preload a 4k movie. But in my experience (which definitely doesn't apply to all countries) a lot of non tech affine people don't do that that often an if they do it (e.g. movies before travel) they tend to do it over the night so it still works out just fine with not so fast internet.So for a lot of people paying for more then 25-50Mb/s (pro person) makes only sense if it isn't too costly. Hence I rarely see people going for more then 250-500 Mb/s even iff 1Gb/s is available and they have money. And for non-gamers with little money, I mostly see them with ~50Mb/s (or paying for 50Mb/s but getting much less due to old wires :( ).
(Also IMHO The more important things compared to 1Gb/s is how much of the bought bandwidth is reliably available at all times _with good latency_...)
by dathinab
5/6/2026 at 8:15:32 AM
The climate concern pearl clutching is pure muckraking. The author doesn't care, they're just looking for some sort of controversy. Do they (or the other seemingly horrified commenters) know how much data is transferred during a single evening of watching HD streaming video?In 2026 4GB of data is not going to have any measurable effect on the climate.
There's a level of hypocrisy involved which is truly absurd. Literally no one reading this is going to curb their data usage. They'll just try to justify their outrage with farcical strawman arguments to be pedantic and then go binge watch some Netflix series without another thought.
by russellbeattie
5/5/2026 at 11:42:18 PM
framing 4 gb of data per user as 4 gb is even more of a stretchby xdavidliu
5/5/2026 at 11:14:13 AM
Agreed, my eyes rolled hard at that. Definitely more of an F-U to users with bad connections than anything else.by zeafoamrun
5/5/2026 at 7:01:09 PM
I mean, with the price of SSDs lately, 4GB is not a completely negligible addition.by liminis
5/5/2026 at 5:20:29 PM
It is sad that this terrible comment inspired so many responses. It is 4GB of traffic for one person, and I am not aware of any single person who is moving petabytes of traffic.Comparing a single person to the entire world to make the inconvenience to or violation of a single person seem small is deliberately and thoughtfully deceptive.
Why not 4TB in traffic and storage for chrome, then? In a world of petabytes of traffic, it's a feather. What's wrong with jailing somebody wrongly for 20 years in a world where millions are jailed, many wrongly, often for lifetimes? What's a lost finger on the job when there's a genocide going on?
by pessimizer
5/5/2026 at 8:14:37 AM
Not on my devices. Auto update has been abused so often now that it is an embarrassment to the industry. Auto update should be for bug fixes and security issues only.by jacquesm
5/5/2026 at 8:44:49 AM
Auto update is basically a root backdoor, it's especially troublesome when you are not the customer, you are the product!by z3t4
5/5/2026 at 11:20:21 AM
Yes, which is why I use paid-for OSes and browsers, instead of free ones like Linux or Firefox. I don't want to be the product.by dist-epoch
5/5/2026 at 11:25:37 AM
I think with Windows you probably are the customer and the productby pipe2devnull
5/5/2026 at 11:58:48 AM
Cory Doctorow had an essay about that years ago, except he didn't artificially limit it to Windows:"Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product: Incentives matter, but impunity matters more."
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar...
by vanderZwan
5/5/2026 at 1:53:28 PM
With Linux you can control up to the detail any auto-update, and any update in general, all the way to being able to inspect the code.by coldtea
5/5/2026 at 8:57:10 PM
With GNU/Linux, yes. With Android/Linux, not so much. [1](I used to dislike this "GNU/Linux" term, it seemed unimportant - Android showed me why the GNU part of it is)
by dbgobrrr
5/6/2026 at 8:46:56 AM
I don't think anybody implied or thought of Android in this subthread, just because it nominally runs the Linux kernel. I for sure understood it as just "Linux = whole OS-level distros of the laptop/PC bound type" not "anything with a Linux kernel even if it's a proprietary mobile phone OS".by coldtea
5/5/2026 at 10:38:58 PM
Only if you have the closed-source Google Play Services... Just like desktop, there are plenty of Android distros like LineageOSby nathanmills
5/5/2026 at 3:45:53 PM
Why is nobody building a paid for browser with built in search engine and LLM assistant? Should probably make it open source for transparency. And before anyone says you would build/compile it yourself if it was open source, those ppl are already running their self compiled tools and are not the target market.by z3t4
5/5/2026 at 6:57:06 PM
Isn't that essentially Dia? (Pro is 20USD/month.) https://www.diabrowser.com/(I miss Arc, such a shame it only gets security/chromium updates now ...)
And I think Codex's desktop client has a built-in browser now? At least I've seen someone using something like that. Nevermind Atlas is a thing now too. https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-atlas/
(Tell me if I'm misunderstanding you?)
by liminis
5/5/2026 at 4:13:31 PM
Who would pay for it when literally every other option has been free for a lifetime?by FoxBJK
5/5/2026 at 4:52:42 PM
You are still the product with commercial OSes. Paying doesn't stop them from shoving ads and telemetry wherever they can.by Narishma
5/5/2026 at 1:37:56 PM
Man, this is a dumb take even by HN standards.by pjc50
5/5/2026 at 1:47:20 PM
No, the dumb take is believing that if you pay for something you are not the product anyway.by dist-epoch
5/5/2026 at 6:59:51 PM
I definitely feel less a product on macOS than anything Google-orientated. I don't know where Windows fits into that exactly, given "paying for Windows" is not really how it's even seen, given major updates were 'free' (with extra ads).by liminis
5/5/2026 at 1:54:40 PM
He meant the face-value of your comment is dumb.But I think it as sarcasm is also wrong.
by coldtea
5/5/2026 at 8:16:53 AM
This is exactly how it works on Debian. Can recommend.by fsflover
5/5/2026 at 8:17:52 AM
Guess what runs my PC. Tech companies just don't understand consent.by jacquesm
5/5/2026 at 11:01:17 AM
It is almost the standard: Q: Does <company> understand consent?
A: No / Maybe Later
Q: Does <company> understand consent?
A: No / Maybe Later / we did it anyway, you'll need to search to find out how to turn it off, maybe ask the new AI model we've just back-door installed?by dspillett
5/5/2026 at 11:22:58 AM
I think they do. They just don’t care. We’re the fleetingly small percentage of nerds in the corner who will notice and complain. Were useful to them for other reasons but we’re not really the concern here.It’s probably a business misplay to tell the other 99% of users about something they weren’t going to think about. But if by chance it goes awry and there’s outcry, just apologize and commit to do better.
by Waterluvian
5/5/2026 at 10:57:04 AM
> ... don't understand consent.The word you're looking for is "respect". They understand consent, the same as JBS* understands animal rights.
by bell-cot
5/5/2026 at 12:59:46 PM
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.by delecti
5/5/2026 at 11:36:33 AM
Do you understand consent?1. Yes
2. Ask me later
by mystraline
5/5/2026 at 2:33:19 PM
There is a difference between- software company decides to release a new version and auto installs it for everyone who has the old version (like Google Chrome)
- software company decides to release a new version. The Debian packaage maintainer checks if the update is fine, is compatible with Debian policies, then includes it in the packages repositories.
In the first, there are no checks. In the second, there are.
by abdullahkhalids
5/5/2026 at 3:30:42 PM
Yes, and it is precisely that kind of curation that makes Debian as valuable as it is.by jacquesm
5/5/2026 at 3:06:15 PM
I'm on an Arch flavor, so its whenever I feel like updating. I try to update frequently enough, but if i wait weeks or months, nothing breaks, it always just works, and I get the latest of everything.by giancarlostoro
5/5/2026 at 8:15:04 AM
Why use a browser from Google or Microsoft in 2026? Why in the world?by dotcoma
5/5/2026 at 8:30:25 AM
I have no idea but when I mention Firefox my colleagues under 35 or so literally think I'm joking.by CalRobert
5/5/2026 at 9:18:31 AM
When Google stuffs AI into everything, people shrug. Can't expect anything else from big tech.When Firefox does it, it sparks outrage across the internet, with entire forums filled with people vowing to leave Firefox forever and switching to something like Waterfor or Ilp/Zorp/Floop instead.
As a result, searching for experiences other people had with Firefox makes it sound like hell on earth, while people have little more to say about Chrome other than "Google gonna Google, but it's fast at least".
by jeroenhd
5/5/2026 at 5:06:30 PM
> When Firefox does it, it sparks outrage across the interneti.e. when firefox does it, people wonder why they aren't using chrome. That's the entire point. The only thing that makes firefox attractive is if they don't do what google does, and they do almost everything google does.
Even if it results in extended campaigns of complaints and hostility from their most devoted users, and the loss of 95% of their installs. As far as I can tell the only thing they backed down on was destroying ublock, and that's because they recognized that it was an existential threat to firefox. The 3% market share that they have now would have become 0.3%, no matter what google did to prop them up.
I certainly don't recommend firefox any more. The amount of effort I have to go through to get the standard 2010 experience quality is absurd and I can't expect anyone else to think it's worth it. It's not worth it to dodge any of this bad behavior anymore, it's industry standard. Going through the effort of dodging it makes you stand out more, and makes you more trackable and targetable. For me it's just compulsive, and my values don't change when the values of the crowd changes. But I can't expect anyone else to download and maintain a git repo that allows you to have basic control over your UI, or to fill out captchas after every pageload.
If you're going to use plain firefox, you might as well use plain chrome. Both of them have the same degree of respect for you, and both of them are owned by the same company. Using plain firefox for freedom is like using an Android phone for freedom. It's amusing that google gets to play the "bad guy" in one of those stories (browser wars) and gets to play the "good guy" in the other (mobile wars.) It's all keyfabe. None of these companies are competing with each other.
> while people have little more to say about Chrome other than "Google gonna Google, but it's fast at least".
Wise words.
by pessimizer
5/5/2026 at 11:24:10 AM
I, being a Firefox user with practically zero Chromium use, would air my grievances when the Mozilla does something I disagree with more than I would when Google does. And I would expect that most Firefox users are of the kind who have strong opinions about how their computers work.You wouldn’t throw the same fit if [insert dictator you don’t have high expectations of here] shot a hundred random civilians compared to if your government did, no?
by notabotiswear
5/5/2026 at 1:21:29 PM
> would air my grievances when the Mozilla does something I disagree with more than I would when Google does.Mozilla doesn't care about your grievances. It collects lots of telemetry about you by default, and has recently officially removed the obligation not to sell your personal data to third parties etc. It also plans to "introduce AI" into its browser.
> And I would expect that most Firefox users are of the kind who have strong opinions about how their computers work.
On the contrary. Those people have moved on, or are in the process of moving on, from Firefox itself to more privacy-minded forks. Like Palemoon, LibreWolf and maybe Mullvard.
by einpoklum
5/5/2026 at 10:39:26 AM
Mozilla is nice enough to let you opt out.I'm in my 40s I have no desire for this new technology unless we get the kind of AI from Japanese anime.
by expedition32
5/5/2026 at 11:22:23 AM
Offering something like a local Gemma 4 (though apparently not what we get here) to web apps via a browser API could change UX quite drastically. Possibly for the better. We had a project where it could have been nice.by ElFitz
5/5/2026 at 2:10:35 PM
> "RMS style curl works for me unless I can have Hatsune Miku"by red-iron-pine
5/5/2026 at 10:35:40 AM
> When Google stuffs AI into everything, people shrug. Can't expect anything else from big tech.Because this is something expected from Google. Google has never committed to security, but Mozilla did.
EDIT: I meant privacy, not security.
by nalekberov
5/5/2026 at 10:42:57 AM
Google has invested significantly in security. I believe you are referring to privacy?by The_Rob
5/5/2026 at 11:21:55 AM
Having rock-solid security for quietly transferring all of your deeply personal and private data to Google feels like a win for the pedants, but a loss for everyone else.by CalRobert
5/5/2026 at 11:07:46 AM
This is a significant point. To many people security includes privacy, which is a fair assumption: in a non-evil timeline user privacy will be one of the first-class components high on the priority list for being secured. Unfortunately companies and the people high up running them only care about their own privacy¹, everyone else is expected to be grateful that we are being stalked so we can be targetted for sales purposes.--------
[1] Follow one of them around the way they track us online, or let out a bit of information about, for example, their tax affairs, and see how fast lawyers or law enforcement arrive on your doorstep…
by dspillett
5/5/2026 at 11:29:46 AM
Oh, you right, thanks for pointing this out. Indeed, I referred to privacy.by nalekberov
5/6/2026 at 9:38:28 AM
Correct, Google has invested significantly in securing themselves from their users.by account42
5/5/2026 at 11:18:49 AM
Google has invested massively into security. On various platforms (non-Chromium Linux excluded), Google Chrome uses advanced defence-in-depth that make Chrome much more secure than Firefox on the same machine. Their origin-based process separation make Chrome a memory hog but protect tab processes from each other in a way Firefox doesn't bother with just yet.Chrome may be a privacy nightmare, but in terms of security it beats Mozilla.
by jeroenhd
5/5/2026 at 2:48:36 PM
Same could be said about Windows vs Linux back in the day, but as another person already pointed out it doesn't make sense when the owner is one of the ones you are trying to protect yourself against.Also, as it turned out, Windows wasn't much more secure than Linux, and I guess we'll find this with Chrome as well. In fact I wonder if this isn't obvious already now that uBlock Origin doesn't work on Chrome any longer?
Besides, isn't Chrome approaching 20 years now and I still cannot have tree style tabs on it so it is still a toy browser meant for causual browsing, not work ;-)
by skinkestek
5/6/2026 at 9:40:20 AM
Not supporting real ad blockers makes it strictly less secure for any threat model that matters for normal people - most importantly less secure against predatory corporations like Google.by account42
5/5/2026 at 1:22:49 PM
Defense is not very meaningful if your browser is provided by one of the parties you need to defend yourself yourself _against_.by einpoklum
5/6/2026 at 9:34:59 AM
I hope you're not implying that that reaction to Mozilla going against the only reason anyone has to use Firefox is unwarranted.by account42
5/7/2026 at 3:36:55 AM
I believe they're implying that when Firefox does debatable thing, expressed outrage is at Level 11
but when
Chrome does far worse version of thing, expressed outrage is at Level Shrug.by WarOnPrivacy
5/5/2026 at 8:48:32 AM
They've been consuming 15+ years of anti-Mozilla rants anytime it or Firefox are mentioned online.It's how you get things like "Browser monocultures are an issue, so don't use Chrome (Blink), use Brave (Chromium (Blink)) instead!" said in earnest.
by heavyset_go
5/5/2026 at 10:41:39 AM
I’ve been using Firefox for 20+ years and continue to do so, but let’s not pretend that Firefox hasn’t been an embarrassing shit show for most of the past 15.by avazhi
5/5/2026 at 11:33:10 AM
10x better than safari and it won’t consume all my RAM like google, so not sure it you’re just repeating what you heard or if you mean what you saidby iammrpayments
5/5/2026 at 12:58:16 PM
I’ve been a Safari user for over 20 years. Every year or so I go on a journey to switch to something else. I’ve use Firefox (LibreWolf, IceWeasle, etc), Chrome (Edge, Arc, etc), Camino, OmniWeb, Orion, Opera (I was primarily an Opera user before Safari), and more. At work I use Edge for weird corporate reasons that I’m not thrilled about.I always end up coming back to Safari for personal use. It seems to do the best job getting out of my way. I am annoyed by how Safari now handles browser extensions. I’d like them to take a page out of Orion’s book and support both Firefox and Chrome extensions. However, I generally have very few extensions, as they tend to slow things down, so this has been a relatively minor issue. The main things I’ve wanted extensions for in other browsers (like word lookup) have come out of the box in Safari (or Apple platforms as a whole) for quite a long time.
by al_borland
5/5/2026 at 4:34:04 PM
You can likely run Firefox Portable from PortableApps.com on your corporate Windows machine. Just make sure you're not running afoul of IT policies. Disclosure: I make itby JohnTHaller
5/5/2026 at 4:54:08 PM
I’m on a Mac these days at work. I used to use and recommend PortableApps a lot back when I was on Windows, thanks for making it.by al_borland
5/5/2026 at 12:03:27 PM
> 10x better than safari and it won’t consume all my RAM like googleUsing the 3 regularly, no, Firefox is not "10 times better than Safari". Though, yes, Chrome(ium) is a ressource hog.
by kergonath
5/5/2026 at 4:51:59 PM
Safari is better than Chrome and FF in enough ways I'd argue it can be considered the best of the three, even to people in tech. The dev tools are just way behind.by nwienert
5/5/2026 at 10:45:29 AM
I'd recommend checking out WaterFox. It's what I switched to when I finally got sick & tired of Mozilla's shit.by DarkUranium
5/5/2026 at 11:03:39 AM
i really feel like trying this out as a quasi-firefox user, but i've really started to love and appreciate Zen for its UI :( wonder if there's a Waterfox X Zen alternative.EDIT: whoops, should've scrolled down a bit on the website, looks like Waterfox has vertical tabs as well. damn, probably going to try to migrate to it sometime soon...
EDIT2: of course supports firefox extensions as well, perfect.
by 4ggr0
5/5/2026 at 11:58:14 AM
Firefox has vertical tabs as well, and it is a lot less bloated that the extension one I was using.by Fnoord
5/5/2026 at 11:09:51 AM
People keep saying this like it's just conventional wisdom we all supposedly agree with. I think it's a string of tech articles and spiraling comment sections searching for drama that's kind of been a self-perpetuating phenomenon over the past 3 or 4 years the majority of which I think has been extremely unfair and mostly just based on vibes. If you actually scroll through HN and read the criticisms, they tend to trail off into vague phrases like "all the stuff they've been doing".If people read the release notes instead of the comment sections, not only would they have a lot more specific knowledge of the work going into the browser but they wouldn't be locked in this cycle of outrage and escalation that normally you only see in YouTube comment sections.
by glenstein
5/5/2026 at 11:23:21 AM
Ok, then. What shitshow? Does it not pale in comparison to Chrome and Edge?by tgv
5/5/2026 at 11:23:15 AM
If Mozilla fired its CEO for a private political donation from 10 years earlier, it will not hesitate to do much worse to its users. Mozilla isn’t on the good side here.He’s the founder of Brave, by the way.
by eastbound
5/6/2026 at 1:56:06 AM
This just makes me support Firefox moreby heavyset_go
5/6/2026 at 11:49:11 AM
It makes you intolerant, as you are unable to comprehend the opinion of other normal people in your society.The action of performing real-life drastic sanctions against people you don’t tolerate is an extremism.
And it is the general opinion of most Mozilla idealists. Mozilla is a political project, and is dangerous to our democracy.
by eastbound
5/5/2026 at 11:37:22 AM
[flagged]by b40d-48b2-979e
5/5/2026 at 4:38:14 PM
Brave also got caught hijacking links and swapping in their own affiliate codeshttps://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-we...
by JohnTHaller
5/7/2026 at 3:27:52 AM
Not quite. We had a couple domains that—when typed into the address bar—would offer a referral-option in the browser UI. If you quickly hit the enter key, you might mistakenly have selected one of those unintentionally. This was a UX bug on our end as the feature wasn't intended to match complete URLs.The goal was to offer folks a means of supporting the development of a privacy-preserving browser, at no cost to them. We blogged about the feature at https://brave.com/blog/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/, and ultimately disabled it by default. But there was never any "hijacking of links," or "swapping of affiliate codes".
The truth is less exciting, I know.
by jonathansampson
5/8/2026 at 1:52:49 AM
The back and forth with Eich on Twitter and him defending it as ethical when it was first reported on painted a different picture at the time for me: https://imgur.com/a/MotmTGhWhen pushback increased, it seemed like it was addressed and then retroactively labeled a bug.
Your own dismissiveness of the issue on Twitter, including posting an image which didn't reflect the actual user experience in Brave stable at the time, left a similarly bad taste: https://imgur.com/a/x9smj6M
by JohnTHaller
5/9/2026 at 4:59:07 PM
That was when I thought the attribute was added only when the user searched, but it was added even to a FQDN which should not have been done.We didn't make anything from this bug, fixed it quickly, it's a black mark on our shield still but it wasn't some mustache-twirling grand plan, believe me. It was a blunder.
by BrendanEich
5/5/2026 at 12:08:07 PM
16-18 years ago. Is bigotry always a permanent condition?by carlivar
5/5/2026 at 12:11:38 PM
At that time, it was 10 years ago, which is what I was responding to. Is bigotry always a permanent condition?
by b40d-48b2-979e
5/5/2026 at 3:34:41 PM
Has he apologized?by dpkirchner
5/5/2026 at 6:50:16 PM
You know, you're condemning most of California. The measure he supported won the vote. Would you like to drive all of them out of their jobs?by kbelder
5/5/2026 at 7:08:23 PM
I wouldn't want to use anything that earn them money, if I could avoid it. That it was half the population doesn't change my view.I understand that it is difficult for me to shun (which is basically what I'm talking about) so many people, or to even know if they should be shunned, but it would definitely be my preference.
by dpkirchner
5/6/2026 at 9:47:16 AM
My man, we do live in a society.by account42
5/6/2026 at 9:46:16 AM
As if apologizing to the cancel mob ever worked out of anyone. All that does is affirm the mob.by account42
5/6/2026 at 11:44:49 AM
Your perspective only confirms that it’s popular within the Mozilla audience to ban people for their political opinion when it’s slightly out of currently-approved opinions. TODAY. Not 18 years ago. Today.Making Mozilla a politically-extremist organization intolerant to other opinions than theirs, and thus incompatible with being a steward of the global web.
by eastbound
5/6/2026 at 9:42:24 AM
Then maybe Mozilla should stop doing things that upset the users that actually care to use Firefox in a vain attempt to chase the average Chrome user.by account42
5/6/2026 at 12:31:24 PM
at least we can use ublock and turn off aiby ahmadtbk
5/5/2026 at 11:42:42 AM
Or simply they haven't heard much about it at all, don't care, and chalk it up to OP being some sort of an odd hipster.Man, so many things could be better if people cared.
by 3form
5/5/2026 at 9:13:54 AM
The more time goes on the more I feel like I live on a different planet. Even things like "shouldn't you be able to decide what software you run on the stuff you own?" gets blank stares.by CalRobert
5/5/2026 at 10:05:17 AM
Hello fellow extraterrestrialby 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 10:56:52 AM
Old heads checking in... Back in my day, we had an exposed file hierarchy and we liked it!by Schlagbohrer
5/5/2026 at 11:16:34 AM
I still remember "oh my friend's iphone has a nice camera, how can I send myself that picture he took with bluetooth?" and being... a bit surprised that it wasn't really possible.by CalRobert
5/5/2026 at 1:22:53 PM
Is anyone disagreeing with that statement?by cdrini
5/5/2026 at 2:49:36 PM
Yeah, among other things when I'm supportive of sideloading and disappointed that it's being greatly restricted on Android.by CalRobert
5/5/2026 at 10:44:29 AM
I mean ... frankly, and I say this as a guy who's used solely Firefox since before it was Firefox all the way until 2025 when I finally got sick & tired of their shit... (now on WaterFox because I refuse to submit to the Google browser monopoly)... Mozilla absolutely did this to themselves. Come think of it, they really remind me of what Microsift's been doing with Windows.
by DarkUranium
5/5/2026 at 11:24:29 AM
I still don't understand what problem you guys have with Firefox. I really don't, and comments like yours are always very vague and seem to assume that it's obvious.For me Firefox is (slightly) better than is used to be, not by a wide margin but it's not gotten worse either.
I've been running it since it was Phoenix so I think my experience is at least somewhat valid, which is why I'm so confused by these comments.
by seszett
5/6/2026 at 2:11:59 PM
I apologize; my comment is vague because I wrote it on my phone, and didn't feel like writing super-long text there. I hate typing on a phone.Anyway, for a browser that keeps touting how it's privacy-centered, they sure as hell love doing horrible things.
Cliqz is a great example; here's a direct quote from Mozilla (emphasis mine):
> "Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit."
This was not opt-in. It was automatically enabled for a percentage of users in (I believe) Germany. Not only is it a blatant breach of the privacy promise, it's such a massive breach it's almost on the cartoon villainy level.
But for me personally, the final straw was the yet-another-pointless-UI-change at or around v103 (or thereabouts, I don't recall the exact version). When they removed icons from a bunch of menus and went with the rounded style. That version's UI redesign worsened accessibility in so many ways, and complaints by visually-impaired users were simply ignored. All for the sake of a UI redesign yet again.
I consider myself an advanced user, and even I get annoyed by the changes. Now imagine someone not tech savvy, e.g. my mother, trying to use Firefox, when the UI suddenly changes between versions. I can adapt to changes far more easily than them (not that I want to, but Mozilla keeps wanting to force it), but for some, it's going to be a struggle. For that reason alone, I can no longer recommend Firefox to non-tech-savvy people (and I used to!).
Meanwhile, Chrome, although I dislike its UI, has kept it relatively stable throughout. People get used to it, and it stays that way. They don't have to learn new things or change their habits. Now, there are a myriad of issues with Chrome, but constant UI rug-pulls aren't one of them.
That's why I'm comparing Mozilla to Microsoft. They ignore users, and shove changes nobody asked for down their throats --- even if it makes things worse for everyone. The UI change, for example, is kind of like the new context menu in Windows Explorer. On top of that, they tout being privacy-focused everywhere in the marketing, but then their actions show the exact opposite.
by DarkUranium
5/6/2026 at 9:50:26 AM
The main problem is consent. Mozilla doesn't understand it. Lots of other problems flow from that.by account42
5/5/2026 at 1:43:38 PM
Are you referring to technical implementation or the poor anti-privacy decisions they keep making when you say 'slightly better'? I have not given up, but I am profoundly disappointed and for somebody who says they have used FF for so long, it feels like I am being gaslit when you say they are peachy.People have problems with what they choose to program, not the quality of their code. I too have used FF since the beginning, but switched to Waterfox last year (it took me about two years to make that decision - I didn't make it lightly). I chose WF in large part because its profile remains compatible with FF so I can switch back if they calm the F down and start acting normal again for long enough to rebuild some trust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mozilla_Corporati... - start at the end for most recent.
Also go to the website of any one of the FF forks and read their reasons for existing. For example:
by sgc
5/5/2026 at 2:05:05 PM
> Are you referring to technical implementation or the poor anti-privacy decisions they keep making when you say 'slightly better'?Which ones are you talking about? I'm talking about Firefox, not the Mozilla Corp to be clear.
by seszett
5/5/2026 at 2:24:06 PM
They are obvious in the links, no time for silly games.by sgc
5/5/2026 at 11:43:12 AM
You’re not alone. Been a user for years and I still don’t get the hate.Having said that, I keep a copy of Ungoogled Chromium for those websites that refuse to test against FF.
by phs318u
5/6/2026 at 2:14:37 PM
FWIW: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48020960Plus there's the Wikipedia link another user posted.
by DarkUranium
5/5/2026 at 11:33:13 AM
Could you list some of the major grievances you have with Firefox? I haven't been following the news very closelyby TonyStr
5/6/2026 at 2:14:02 PM
To avoid repeating myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48020960by DarkUranium
5/5/2026 at 2:17:53 PM
its almost like Google, a marketing company with a serious requirement for data mining, could be talking shit about Mozilla...by red-iron-pine
5/6/2026 at 9:48:15 AM
Why would Google talk shit about their subsidiary's product.by account42
5/5/2026 at 12:19:45 PM
Is Vivaldi any good?by pyeri
5/6/2026 at 5:51:33 AM
I've switched to it some months ago and I like it. It's based on Chromium, so switching from Chrome is almost seamlessby bean469
5/5/2026 at 1:40:54 PM
Even if it is, you can look at it like Chrome on launch. It was good then, but has become belligerent because they can.by thesuitonym
5/5/2026 at 8:19:22 AM
What browsers would you recommend? I use Brave but it's still Chromium under the hood. It's the only one that I never had trouble with adblock though. Also lets me play youtube on mobile when my screen is locked.by sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 8:26:15 AM
Brave origin on linux looks pretty solid now. Now I'm using that and Librewolf.by StingyJelly
5/5/2026 at 8:45:51 AM
I will never use Brave after the debacle where they injected content into sites downloaded over HTTPS to pretend people were promoting their crypto token and adding a "donate" button on the page.by dwedge
5/5/2026 at 8:54:09 AM
That made me avoid it for a long time but there hasn't been more concerning behavior since, so some point, we can move on.by StingyJelly
5/5/2026 at 8:55:48 AM
Did they ever address it? It's still the same company with presumably the same ideals. I was using it daily at the time, maybe it's better now.by dwedge
5/5/2026 at 10:26:58 AM
Brave is a series scam company. Always has been, always will be.by a96
5/5/2026 at 8:36:20 AM
I just checked it out, but it removes Tor access? It would pretty much downgrade the regular browserby sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 8:49:37 AM
I think using tor in brave just makes you stand out more - stock tor browser is probably a better setup. Whonix even better.by StingyJelly
5/5/2026 at 8:54:52 AM
It helps if you're doing mundane things and want to help people who need to mix their sensitive traffic with it.More people "legitimately" using Tor makes it less likely to have its exit nodes outright blocked, as well, and assuming all traffic from them is malicious.
by heavyset_go
5/5/2026 at 9:12:51 AM
That's charitable, but even then you probably want to avoid fingerprinting...by StingyJelly
5/5/2026 at 9:01:28 AM
Brave it's spyware, keep going with Librewolf. You can disable some fingerprinting support for WebGL -but- you need UBo for sure (and JShelter).by anthk
5/5/2026 at 8:28:24 AM
Firefox.by chinathrow
5/5/2026 at 10:43:50 AM
is it as greedy as chrome for the ram?by dickeeT
5/5/2026 at 11:11:54 AM
In my recent experience: definitely yes, though not significantly worse. Unless you have [many] hundreds of tabs open (which I do as I have neither executive function nor organisational skills), or have a machine with very limited RAM, I don't think you'll notice a difference.This is anecdata, of course, take with a pinch of your preferred flavouring powder.
by dspillett
5/5/2026 at 11:52:12 AM
Chrome on Windows is running with thousands of tabs "open" over dozens of windows, but it does practically max out on a certain number of tabs per window (not just the GUI, but something in the memory architecture), and it does stack fat cache which will crash the whole thing if it digs deeper than your available space.Windows even runs (semi-playably) 2020's shooters in this condition, though you need to kill any windows close to the tab limit that are full of recently opened tabs.
[Yes, I know, the horror]
by mapt
5/5/2026 at 10:59:36 AM
Yes: https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-chrome-2026/4> Chrome also came in at slightly lower memory consumption across all the benchmarks with total memory usage on average at 4.67GB to Firefox at 4.83GB.
by theandrewbailey
5/5/2026 at 8:34:18 AM
[flagged]by sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 8:51:46 AM
Yes, actually!Well, it does require you to install an extension[0], but it can be done.
by sham1
5/5/2026 at 8:54:43 AM
Thats good to know, but I am a "out of the box" person. I never want to have to manually install extensions as thats just more stuff to remember when setting up a new machine. Yea thats a me problem, but still.by sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 9:31:43 AM
It used to support it out-of-the-box as well, but it's technically against YouTube's ToS to allow this without paying for a premium, so now you need this as an extra hoop.by input_sh
5/5/2026 at 10:54:14 AM
Why should a browser be policing YouTube’s ToS for them?by robin_reala
5/5/2026 at 12:03:49 PM
Agreed, this sounds strange indeed. Much more likely is that Google found a reliable way to detect the screen status using a standard feature and Mozilla just implements the standard neutrallyby Aachen
5/5/2026 at 10:58:36 AM
Wouldn't know, as I have never been in charge of one, but I imagine Google having the power to make your browser completely irrelevant would be a pretty strong incentive.by input_sh
5/5/2026 at 9:29:19 AM
You want to have your cake and eat it too, I think the best solution in your case is paying for youtubeby kioleanu
5/5/2026 at 9:45:32 AM
Or I just keep using brave and not pay for the biggest media corpo that just passed Disney in revenue.by sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 12:00:09 PM
Was Brave pre-installed on your computer or did you remember to install it?by Fnoord
5/5/2026 at 12:01:52 PM
You don't install software on your machines that didn't come pre-installed/configured?by Aachen
5/5/2026 at 12:54:40 PM
They're literally asking for a paid YouTube feature to be free "out of the box". Lol wild.by chneu
5/5/2026 at 1:20:16 PM
Nah I want general media playback in the background. Doesn't matter if its Youtube or any other platform. I dont want giga corpos to monetize my attention. Youtube does well enough from ads anyway ;)by sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 11:19:40 AM
Even youtube's app itself doesn't allow that unless you pay. I suspect they've nobbled most browsers into not allowing it, either by technical measures or (more likely) the strong-arm tactic of saying “if you don't block this we'll find a way to make the entire of youtube practically unusable on your browser”.I've been using Grayjay recently which does allow that, amongst a number of other useful features (integrating other media sources, lack of adverts every few minutes in some content). Might be worth considering as an option.
by dspillett
5/5/2026 at 11:45:28 AM
Kagi’s Orion browser on iOS is able to play YT vids in the background.by phs318u
5/6/2026 at 9:10:01 AM
I suspect that if youtube's metric show that enough people are doing that (without paid accounts) it'll stop by default for the same reasons it stopped in FF.by dspillett
5/5/2026 at 9:04:21 AM
It allows you to play youtube without ads with ublock origin.by lukan
5/5/2026 at 9:10:14 AM
I used ublock origin for a while, but I kept having issues with it on Youtube due to Youtubes anti adblock measurements. Brave for some reason always had a fix for it pretty quickly, so I never experienced these issues with it. Maybe I could try a different browser again on my next machine.by sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 8:51:25 AM
In iOS kinda yes; you have to request desktop version, and once you activate the lock screen for the first time you have to press “play”. Then it just plays and auto plays in the background.Don’t know about android, but there is also an extension there that blocks the visibility page api for YouTube.
by freehorse
5/5/2026 at 11:22:04 AM
Why not simply use NewPipe [0]?You also get ad filtering and you can download Audio/Video streams from within the app.
by purerandomness
5/5/2026 at 12:17:58 PM
You can play yt video in firefox with locked screen but you need to use desktop modeby high_na_euv
5/5/2026 at 9:02:38 AM
Yes. That's the primary reason I use it, but you have to install an extension called "Video Background Play Fix".by tdeck
5/5/2026 at 8:48:23 AM
Tubular app does, and it blocks adsby ranger_danger
5/5/2026 at 10:33:46 AM
Vivaldi - built in ad blocker, the creator is a nice guy, transparent business model. It might be rough around the edges, but it's much better from every alternative imho.by yard2010
5/5/2026 at 10:53:26 AM
…and Chromium under the hood.by robin_reala
5/5/2026 at 7:14:17 PM
Arc is still great on macOS (not so much the Windows build, essentially an abandoned beta) even if it's not getting active development anymore.I'm defaulting to Firefox ever since I moved my desktop to CachyOS, but I need to either reacquaint myself with its add-on situation after a long arc of using "chrome alternatives", or migrate to something else niche. Vivaldi was what I was sold on before Arc caught my attention through its wonderful UX/UI.
by liminis
5/6/2026 at 6:39:48 AM
I heard Arc was abandoned and not getting any more work because they were moving to their new AI browser. So, Zen has replaced it for me, and it is based on Firefox which is nice to avoid the chromiumby okinok
5/5/2026 at 8:30:26 AM
I still use Firefox. It does all I need with no ads. That's nice.by kuerbel
5/6/2026 at 3:59:42 AM
Konform BrowserMullvad Browser
Tor Browser for those occasions
by pamcake
5/5/2026 at 8:36:42 AM
Currently using Helium.by dotcoma
5/5/2026 at 8:50:15 AM
This one looks neat, is it also based on Chromium?by sevenzero
5/5/2026 at 10:24:56 AM
Yes.by dotcoma
5/5/2026 at 4:58:38 PM
Safariby stalfosknight
5/5/2026 at 8:16:03 AM
I agree. This is Google doing underhanded Google-things. Why the hell would anyone trust them in the first place?by thyristan
5/5/2026 at 7:18:46 PM
Google's "don't be evil" motto already felt ironic over a decade ago, long before they even replaced it with "do the right thing [for shareholder value?]".by liminis
5/6/2026 at 9:56:19 AM
You have to understand it to work like in many RPG games - you get to murder and pillage from time to time as long as you donate some of your ill gotten gains to move your alignment back to "neutral".by account42
5/5/2026 at 12:37:09 PM
> 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.
by azangru
5/6/2026 at 1:51:50 AM
> Blink is the most featurefulIt’s not a waste of bandwidth and disk space, it’s a feature!
by mr_toad
5/5/2026 at 9:39:33 AM
Exactly my thoughts. There are so many good alternatives already, it's insane to me that people still use this garbage. LibreWolf is a godsendby braggerxyz
5/5/2026 at 10:40:30 AM
Why in the world do people keep shipping Chrome with their pseudo native applications?by pjmlp
5/5/2026 at 11:45:21 AM
Easy. You work for a company that has only whitelisted chrome or edge.by TrackerFF
5/5/2026 at 2:13:43 PM
Nothing says you have to use the same browser at work and outside of work? I use Edge for work, Firefox everywhere else.by bpye
5/5/2026 at 8:19:27 AM
I use Chrome because at Google Meet it renders a nice separate window with mute/unmute controls as you switch to another tab and screen share.Curious if Google plans to allow other browsers doing that too.
by k_bx
5/5/2026 at 8:49:07 AM
You could use Chromium just for Google Meet. That's what I do. I have Chromium relatively up to date that I basically solely use when I need to. It can be Google Meet, or Teams, or whatever was purposely botched in order NOT to work with Firefox, basically sabotage, but it can also be very rare cases like Lego Spike or GrapheneOS Web installer which require WebUSB.99.99% I do not need Chromium but when I do, it's worth the ~200MB of used space.
by utopiah
5/6/2026 at 8:48:34 AM
That's exactly what I do with Chrome, use it for Google Meet and some websites that work best in Chrome (heavy apps like Figma or whatever). 99% it's Firefox.by k_bx
5/5/2026 at 8:38:40 AM
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.by jimbob45
5/5/2026 at 9:19:25 AM
I don't understand this perspective. How can one accept the objectively more user hostile option because the less hostile one gets money from the other. If one objects to using products funded by google, why is there not also an objection to using products from google?For as long as the funding for Firefox continues, it remains a viable option. And despite all their bad decisions of late, they still give users the ability to configure or disable user hostile components.
Their funding model is a risk, but I've been using Firefox and librewolf forever and I'd argue it's a much better option than chrome or edge, especially with a handful of plugins. A risk is still better than the actual realization of the risk.
by 0x0203
5/5/2026 at 1:03:06 PM
> Firefox doesn’t count because they’re being funded by Google.Even if that were true, it's still a better option _today_.
by maleldil
5/5/2026 at 8:44:24 AM
In the short term, Helium (if, like me, you can’t live without Chrome’s bookmarks). In the medium term, perhaps Ladybird. In the long term, we’re all dead.by dotcoma
5/5/2026 at 8:57:56 AM
I think they were looking for browsers that aren't based on Chromium or Gecko, which, for something still regularly updated and works with most websites, I think webkit is the only real alternative.by ranger_danger
5/5/2026 at 8:56:04 AM
Anything webkit-based and open source like Epiphany or Konqueror/Rekonq, it matches your "moneyed corp" requirement (Apple).by ranger_danger
5/5/2026 at 11:52:00 AM
i use chrome enterprise for my personal use, which is managed via the google workspace admin.you would think google is not stupid enough to mess with gcp account holders
by lukewarm707
5/5/2026 at 11:12:34 PM
because it's really well developed and Just Worksby htx80nerd
5/6/2026 at 9:39:42 PM
...and enslaves you.by timbit42
5/5/2026 at 8:28:44 AM
Because ladybird isn’t alpha yet, and Firefox is a mess.by hacker_homie
5/5/2026 at 8:33:19 AM
What mess? I only ever used Chrome as my main browser for a short while when Firefox had become rather bloaty and had slow JS, and Chrome was small and nimble. But that was something like fifteen years ago. Firefox works, is plenty fast these days, and only eats most of my RAM compared to Chrome which takes all of it, and serves me a web devoid of almost all ads and most trackers.by Sharlin
5/5/2026 at 8:54:26 AM
From a funding standpoint there’s no future to Firefox. They will get brought Mozilla foundation is an investment fund now. Firefox it dead weight.by hacker_homie
5/5/2026 at 11:29:01 AM
They push millions of lines of code every quarter including thousands of patches, constant security updates and performance improvements and deepened support for web platform standards. As open source projects go, it's probably one of the most active and thriving ones there is. As eager as some people are to dance on Mozilla's grave, that day isn't coming anytime soon.If you wanted to point to the year where they've been the best financed they've ever been and where they've had the most resources invested into browser development they ever have, that year would be 2026. Only to be exceeded by 2027 and then 2028, 2029 and beyond.
At a bare minimum, their endowment gives them probably a two to three year firewall in the event that their funding is cut off, which it hasn't been. I also thought the accusation was supposed to be the other way around, namely that we all knew they were going to get funded into perpetuity as controlled opposition.
by glenstein
5/5/2026 at 9:05:03 AM
This isn't particularly relevant to whether you should use it right now though. If there's a restaurant I like but it might go out of business in a year I don't stop eating there today.by tdeck
5/5/2026 at 8:58:54 AM
Firefox is open source :)by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 9:04:39 AM
Firefox has a complete UBo unlike the Chrom* corporateware turd which is just Microsoft 2.0 from Google. Chrome instead of IE, and propietary JS code for Google services such as Youtube -deliberately made slower in Firefox- as the new Active X shoved down your throat in order to keep a monopoly.With Librewolf I can get proper WebGL, full UBo -with the AI blocklist too to avoid all the slop- and Bypass Paywall Clean from Giflic or whatever was called. Yeah, eh, y local newspaper won't mainly get adverts' money but the rest of local company ads show up well even with UBo/BPC, so they get some money after all.
On RAM usage, Librewolf it's far lighter on the long term and it doesn't ping back as Firefox, and many times less than Chrom* based browsers where, I repeat, Chrome based browsers don't allow UBo any more even if installed from their Github repo enforcing some about:flags variables related to legacy extension support.
The web today without UBo it's unmanageable. Popus, more than the ones from 2003, malware disguised as ads even on mainstream, safe sites, and all of these running zillions of cookies and trackers converting your -otherwise perfectly usable- old amd64 Celeron machine with 2GB of RAM into some crawling Pentium III with 256MB of RAM. With LibreWolf and UBo I could even test Yandex Maps with Prypiat and the like and InstantStreetView too. No slowdowns, no OpenGL >= 3.3/Vulkan video card required, and no need to own a 8GB machine.
HN developers there without UBo if they depend on the web for documentation they are bit screwed if they use Chrom* based browsers, sorry. Half of the resources for their machines coudn't be used, you know for IDE's, compilers, virtual machines/containers and whatnot. And, yes, I know about ZRAM under GNU/Linux, and just imagine how many tasks would anyone accomplish with a ZRAM compressed chunk (~1/3 of the physical RAM), a light desktop environment as Lumina/LXQT and a non-Chrom* browser blocking all pests. Up to 3X more tasks in the same machine. No need to waste money on upgrades, and compilng cycles are cut down for the good.
by anthk
5/5/2026 at 10:39:34 AM
Ublock origin works perfectly fine on Edge. With Firefox I've also had ram usage that was multiples of what I get with Edge, on both Linux and Windowsby Numerlor
5/5/2026 at 8:30:29 AM
It's the browser that annoys me the least. Almost everything just works.by jangxx
5/5/2026 at 3:10:50 PM
Yeah that's mostly why I use it. When I try Firefox I get out of memory messages for some reason. Also the Google Lens tool is very handy and gets used often.by tim333
5/5/2026 at 10:12:25 PM
Thank you. Exactly this question. Full stop.by 31337Logic
5/5/2026 at 8:14:12 AM
Somebody's promotion packet depended on pushing this through the approval process.by tdeck
5/5/2026 at 10:06:14 AM
I was working on on-device AI for 3 years. This was the prime idea we were exploring, how can someone undercut the OS providers and ship an LLM that other apps can also use on-device. Like if meta decides to do this, it can serve an API to all mobile app companies for an on-device LLM long before the OS is there. This is Google's way of reaching LLM distribution on laptops, since they don't have their ownby kushalpatil07
5/5/2026 at 8:11:26 AM
The site is currently unavailable 503 so I can't read it. But I wonder, what should you consent to? Every dependency? Every dependency above 1GB?by ponyous
5/5/2026 at 8:16:25 AM
Maybe consent is not an appropriate term. Perhaps an acknowledgement and a way to say "I don't want this" would be a more suitable approach. I feel like a flag to turn off LLMs is useful. Firefox added something like this in a recent release. I don't know how much they're downloading or how much they run it, nor would I be a good judge if it's necessary or not, but I don't want that functionality in my browser so turned it off.by scorpioxy
5/5/2026 at 8:31:59 AM
Isn't that asking for consent?by cwillu
5/5/2026 at 8:39:59 AM
the subject has been faced many years ago an super well applied in EU privacy regulations: Google knows it very well, and in super details and I have no doubt they will be fined for this despite all reduction of it thanks to their lobbying (and corruptions, too, in my super personal opinion): this fact well explain EU fines based on company's income.by oriettaxx
5/5/2026 at 10:38:51 AM
why would they be fined for this? In fact a local LLM is exactly the opposite direction of a privacy concern. The local LLM gives an answer generated locally and never uploaded to a server.by socalgal2
5/5/2026 at 10:52:39 AM
[dead]by oriettaxx
5/5/2026 at 11:22:51 AM
There's a setting in `chrome://flags` mentioned in the post that allows users to turn this off. I guess people want opt-in consent rather opt-out consent which there's always debate about. Some people say it degrades the experience for the majority of users who would opt-in for the happiness of the few possibly already detracting users.by derangedHorse
5/5/2026 at 8:12:08 AM
Extra power and ram usage without your permission, for example.by nottorp
5/5/2026 at 8:14:42 AM
Exactly, for all the hate of Windows, I could at least just look for shit named co-pilot and uninstall it for a pretty nice experience on my new computer. Phones aren't always as straightforward (especially jarring as "Google services" are required in Sweden on Android for stuff like mobile identity systems).by whizzter
5/5/2026 at 8:41:35 AM
This is so absurd... I have to keep an old (rooted in order to hide that adb is enabled) phone connected to my home server just to use such app, because grapheneos without google services is apparently not secure enough.by StingyJelly
5/5/2026 at 8:17:12 AM
Read the article, it's not about that, but a mere 4GB of storage.by trvz
5/5/2026 at 10:35:30 AM
4GB of storage is not a “mere” thing, to the contrary.by paganel
5/5/2026 at 10:42:09 AM
It is in 2026. Average daily household usage is at ~25gig. That's average, so 50% are more than thatby socalgal2
5/5/2026 at 11:46:14 AM
It sounds like you’re talking about network usage, but this is about storage.Also, average doesn’t mean 50% lower and 50% higher.
by trvz
5/5/2026 at 4:09:20 PM
I did mention "storage".by paganel
5/5/2026 at 8:29:01 AM
Oh and why is it there? Do you really think it's not loaded and executed automatically by default, so some Google executive can justify their "AI" spend?by nottorp
5/5/2026 at 8:31:47 AM
I don’t. Do you have any actual evidence they’re doing that beyond the vibe?by joegibbs
5/5/2026 at 11:05:01 AM
Do I look like law enforcement? I don't have to do innocent until proven guilty.It's the tech company's problem to convince me they are trying to do something useful to me. Come to think of it, it's their problem to convince me they still understand "useful to the customer" first.
by nottorp
5/5/2026 at 9:06:55 AM
Does that include the CPU burning cat girl captchas or not?by izacus
5/6/2026 at 10:04:10 AM
It absolutely should.by account42
5/5/2026 at 9:07:43 AM
Hello iOS upgrade.by cluckindan
5/5/2026 at 8:18:34 AM
Don't install chrome in the first place thenby mightysashiman
5/5/2026 at 8:29:48 AM
I'm logged in to work in Chrome and to personal stuff in Firefox :)by nottorp
5/5/2026 at 8:15:00 AM
That ship has sailed on the web a long time ago.by KeplerBoy
5/5/2026 at 11:34:07 PM
Sounds like the words of someone that doesn't pay for their data use.Silicon Valley is not the world.
by McGlockenshire
5/5/2026 at 8:19:37 AM
> At Chrome's scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push.Environmental analysis for operations? Not a fan of thinking in such terms.
> For users on capped mobile data plans, particularly in regions where smartphone-as-only-internet is dominant (much of Africa, much of South and Southeast Asia, most of Latin America), 4 GB of unrequested download is on the order of a month's data allowance, vapourised by Chrome on the user's behalf. Google has not, to my knowledge, published any analysis of the welfare impact of this on the populations whose internet access is metered.
THIS is a valid concern. Otherwise I'm not buying into "ask for consent because of dependency X". Users don't like questions/consents.
However OS (at least windows) has an way to set network connection as a metered so software can make informed decisions. Also Android has "Data Saver" function which should also be honored by software.
by jve
5/5/2026 at 8:22:02 AM
> Environmental analysis for operations? Not a fan of thinking in such terms.Why not? It's about 60 000 London - New York City flights by the way (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/...). And what's the benefit again?
by PatronBernard
5/5/2026 at 8:26:42 AM
Some parts of the anti-AI movement are becoming so unhinged that now any use of compute is considered an environmental threat. This degrowth mentality needs to die.by pu_pe
5/5/2026 at 8:33:17 AM
Should I reminder you what unlimited growth means and how it ends up in biology? Society/technology is no exception.by wartywhoa23
5/5/2026 at 8:56:35 AM
No need for unlimited growth, just normal sustainable progress like the one that allows you and me to communicate here after centuries of technological progress.by pu_pe
5/5/2026 at 7:10:41 PM
> No need for unlimited growthWell then at some point you need to stop growing.
by pier25
5/6/2026 at 10:05:49 AM
The "AI" craze has been very far from normal or sustainable.by account42
5/5/2026 at 9:01:05 AM
Ah yes, sustainable progress, like we're doing now?by PatronBernard
5/5/2026 at 9:09:16 AM
The "normal sustainable progress" has already pushed us to the brink of extinction. AI is rapidly accelerating our resource use, with nothing good to show for it.by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 10:19:19 AM
How exactly are we "on the brink of extinction"? ("We" as in humans; many other species are obviously not as lucky.)We are probably on the brink of very bad consequences for a signification fraction of all humans (up to and including all of them, to some extent), which is a huge problem that needs to be addressed.
But what do you gain by incorrectly labeling that as "extinction"? Because you do definitely lose credibility for it, similarly to everybody using hyperbolic language such as "boiling the oceans" etc.
by lxgr
5/5/2026 at 8:58:26 AM
If it's emissions they worry about, then it's anything emitting.Are they against washing machines too? Or are they just grandfathered in?
by farfatched
5/5/2026 at 10:05:27 AM
This is literally why the EU mandates appliance energy efficiency.It's never a binary thing. "Is using energy good or bad?" is a stupid question which can only provide stupid answers. It has to be placed in the context of whether it's proportionate to benefit.
Things which burn a lot of energy for little benefit - and in the case of AI, often negative benefit - end up more towards the "bad".
by pjc50
5/6/2026 at 3:23:18 AM
That's a fair point.I hadn't considered that societies rightfully impose standards on these things.
I consider it too early to judge the cost-benefit, but it's fair that others might have already evaluated that. I rescind my comment.
by farfatched
5/5/2026 at 9:14:46 AM
Don't be disingenuous. Not all energy is created equally.by zekrioca
5/5/2026 at 9:29:43 AM
Are we back to magic water and magic soil? Does the energy have some morality attached to it?The emissions per kWh of energy used in providing internet downloads probably is similar to that per kWh of energy used for washing clothes.
by newtonsmethod
5/5/2026 at 12:19:37 PM
You're not seriously trying to explain that a kWh is equal to a kWh. Why not cut the crap? Are you trying to say washing clothes is of equal importance to convenience features in a browser, given that we can use each clean kWh only once? I can't tell what you truly mean like thisby Aachen
5/5/2026 at 12:58:14 PM
>a kWh is equal to a kWhYes, and it's none of your business how other people spend their electricity.
by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 2:07:09 PM
That's where we disagree. With our current system so reliant on fossil fuels, every kWh generated is a debt to our planet, our society.Until that's resolved, I don't wish that debt incurred for frivolous uses.
by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 3:38:01 PM
What do you mean you "disagree"? I pay for the electricity I use and I use it however I want.Instead of trying to control other people, why can't you start with yourself? Throw away your phone/computer. Go live in a small hut. Practice what you preach.
by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 4:36:02 PM
You read what I wrote, you just chose not to engage with it and went into an ideological creed instead.You may pay for it, but I and the rest of the planet incur the cost.
I can go live the life of a hermit and the above will still be true.
Your electricity use puts more pollution into our air. It burns our forests. It kills species we all depend on.
No man is an island. Your actions affect others. Just paying your indulgences does not make that basic fact away.
by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 5:54:50 PM
[flagged]by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 6:09:07 PM
[flagged]by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 7:55:48 PM
[flagged]by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 8:13:39 PM
Still no engagement with actual arguments brought up several posts ago at this point. Still more attempts at derailment.Speaks for itself. I shall leave it at this then.
by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 8:17:36 PM
[flagged]by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 8:38:42 PM
[flagged]by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 9:09:20 PM
[flagged]by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 9:27:54 PM
[flagged]by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 9:39:11 PM
[flagged]by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 9:41:14 PM
[flagged]by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 9:47:33 PM
>until we coerce the more repugnant parts of societyGo away, troll.
by frozenseven
5/6/2026 at 5:54:53 AM
You will notice I let you state your views without going absolutely deranged and resorting to ad-hominems.Why can I not state my philosophical positions without you absolutely freaking out?
If you disagree, you should be able to articulate why. But you don't. Why?
Is it narrow-mindedness? Insecurity? Fear of debate? A nagging feeling I might be right and it would absolutely destroy your identity to admit so?
by vrganj
5/6/2026 at 12:17:22 PM
>until we coerce the more repugnant parts of societyI noticed. Shoo, troll.
by frozenseven
5/6/2026 at 2:55:40 PM
An honest reflection of my values. What's wrong with that? Why does not agreeing with you make me a troll?You must encounter lots of trolls. Good thing you're not one.
by vrganj
5/6/2026 at 3:34:56 PM
You can stop soliciting.by frozenseven
5/6/2026 at 2:58:26 PM
[flagged]by jitler
5/6/2026 at 3:31:17 PM
He even brought out his alt.by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 8:50:35 PM
You are not paying for the total cost of the electricity you use.You pay for a portion of it, in money.
The other portion of it is belched up into the atmosphere for future generations to pay.
You are incurring debt and forcing it upon others.
by dml2135
5/6/2026 at 12:10:17 AM
>You are incurring debt and forcing it upon others.You seem to have no problem whatsoever with using electricity yourself. So when do you get to tell me (or anyone else) how to live? And when does it stop? Btw, this is all bizarrely dramatic since we were talking about small local models anyway.
>future generations
Yeah, and some will also say (using the same arguments) that having children is harmful to the planet and we need "measures" to limit that too.
by frozenseven
5/7/2026 at 12:56:04 AM
I’m not telling you to do one thing or another. I’m taking issue with your argument that because you pay an electric bill, it follows that you can do whatever you want.That does not follow logically for me. As humans we disagree about many things, but we generally agree that things that we do often affect others, so one way or another, we need to come together and decide which things are agreed to be acceptable and which things are not.
by dml2135
5/8/2026 at 3:56:18 PM
And I'm not inclined to entertain this nonsense, not even as a hypothetical. I'm not giving up on my most basic and fundamental rights, doubly so when these draconian restrictions won't apply to the people who want to impose them.by frozenseven
5/6/2026 at 5:56:22 AM
Why do you get to tell me (or anyone else) how to live? Why do you get to decide that burning my forest is acceptable?by vrganj
5/6/2026 at 12:19:11 PM
Not interested, go away.by frozenseven
5/5/2026 at 9:08:21 AM
Our planet is literally dying.The oceans are boiling [0], marine life is dying [1]. Land close to the water will be land under water soon [2]. The ice caps are melting and setting free all sorts of diseases. [3]
Large parts of our planet on fire all the time now, here's one from Australia from this year [4], but I'm sure you've read about wildfires in Australia last year, California every year, Greece last year etc etc.
What you're proposing is nothing short of a death cult. It's either degrowth or we all die, sacrificed at the altar of capitalism.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/09/profound...
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-026-03013-5
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02299-w
[3] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/could-microbes-l...
[4] https://phys.org/news/2026-01-australia-declares-state-disas...?
by vrganj
5/5/2026 at 9:32:40 AM
Why do you attribute to capitalism an issue that is much more fundamental than it? People want more stuff and better lives, it's as simple as that. Even hunger/gatherer societies brought themselves to extinction multiple times in the past, and I doubt the USSR would have fared better against climate change.Technological progress is also societal progress. If we embraced degrowth in the 1800's (there was a ton of pollution back then, and a Malthusian belief in disaster!) we might not see slavery being abolished or women being able to vote.
by pu_pe
5/5/2026 at 12:21:21 PM
> People want more stuff and better lives, it's as simple as that.Not everyone wants this at the cost of others. It's not as simple as that / not a necessary consequence of our desire to find clever solutions to solve everyday inconveniences
by Aachen
5/5/2026 at 9:49:42 AM
Because capitalism ties together better lives an ideological belief in unbounded growth.Will people's lives really be better once they're drowning or choking on wildfire smoke? But hey, at least they had cheap junk!
It's possible to have better lives as well as societal progress without endless growth. Technological progress, too, doesn't have to mean burning our oceans. We just gotta actually think about the costs and consequences of our actions.
Not every technological development is inherently good. Sometimes the cost is not worth the result. I posit the cost of AI so far has been astronomical, higher than anything else in living memory. The results on the other hand have been rather middling.
This is my issue. A cost/benefit analysis, not a strict no to progress.
by vrganj
5/6/2026 at 11:40:33 PM
You're also dying since you were born.by lobito25
5/5/2026 at 9:32:24 AM
Have you ever made a decision to NOT download something, turn on your computer, experiment, etc based on your perceived impact on the planet?I mean this should (and is) be tackled at the source: 0/low emission energy generation and not consumer having to think about these decisions. Sustainable data centers using renewables etc. But not that the companies should associate/evaluate/consider bytes downloaded with environmental impact.
by jve
5/5/2026 at 1:20:29 PM
>not consumer having to think about these decisionsConsumers vote and advocate for what they want and don't want. There are many who say it's not an individual problem and should be dealt with broadly through regulation, then also oppose any attempts at regulation.
by duskdozer
5/5/2026 at 12:25:24 PM
> this should (and is) be tackled at the source: 0/low emission energy generation and not consumer having to think about these decisions.Until we're at that point though, the 'winners' in this market society (that wield unimaginable amounts of money = resources) such as Google could certainly think about consequences of their choices. And they usually do to some extent, I'm not saying they don't, just that electric supply and demand has two sides to it
by Aachen
5/5/2026 at 2:14:38 PM
I'm going to assume you work in tech and know the issues that come with scale.Me, individually not doing something is gonna absolutely be drowned out by the scale of many other people not thinking of it or being incentivized against it.
This is a systemic issue. A systemic issue needs a systemic solution, not a blame shift to the individual.
We didn't get rid of lead in gas or asbestos in walls by telling people it was bad for them. We did so by banning it.
by vrganj
5/6/2026 at 6:45:49 AM
[dead]by jve
5/5/2026 at 8:39:56 AM
> However OS (at least windows) has an way to set network connection as a metered so software can make informed decisions. Also Android has "Data Saver" function which should also be honored by software.Unfortunately, that automation is unreliable. It doesn't work across operating systems - Windows laptops won't enable data-saver mode when connected to iPhones and macOS laptops won't when connected to Android phones, and neither will enable it when connected to, say, public transport wifi.
And even if the OS has the information, websites can't reliably use it either. Firefox and Safari both don't implement the NetworkInformation API [1].
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/NetworkInfo...
by mschuster91
5/5/2026 at 8:22:48 AM
I know it takes extra steps to make Android perform OS or app updates over LTE. I doubt it's downloading a 4GB model over LTE unless the user has chosen to perform updates over LTE.by SwellJoe
5/6/2026 at 8:19:35 AM
The following seems to keep Chrome from re-downloading this beast: # From one's $HOME dir:
rm -fr ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
mkdir -p ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
touch ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/weights.bin
chmod 0400 ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/weights.bin
chmod 0500 ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
This has, so far, kept Chrome from (re)installing that file on my system.
Hypothetically the parts involving weights.bin aren't needed so long as the containing directory is not writable.
by sgbeal
5/6/2026 at 9:45:27 AM
FYI, this doesn't appear to work on macOS, unless I'm lucky enough that Chrome has never installed anything related to this on my machine. I don't even have a ~/.config/google-chrome directory; it's possible Google is using some Apple-alternative to that standard.by oneeyedpigeon
5/6/2026 at 2:44:24 PM
Might be a good addition for https://superuser.com/questions/1937372/by AdminAccount
5/6/2026 at 4:09:11 PM
> Might be a good addition for https://superuser.com/questions/1937372/Done! Edit: nevermind - i've deleted it. The community guidelines request/require that responses actually attempt to answer the question (how to block all AI usage), which this response does not address.
by sgbeal
5/5/2026 at 5:12:17 PM
I don't see how this is going to work when every application decides to ship and run a 4GB model, competing for video memory. It's going to be the Electron problem times 10.by dunham
5/5/2026 at 8:50:51 AM
Looks like the site's struggling to keep up with the traffic. A couple mirror links:https://web.archive.org/web/20260505052217/https://www.thatp...
https://archive.ph/sM7O5 (missing images and styling, but the content all seems to be there)
by peterjmag
5/5/2026 at 4:05:28 PM
Oh dear! Imagine all the carbon the many requests this server are using! Hoisted by their own petard…by semiquaver
5/6/2026 at 11:14:41 AM
Pure, unadulterated, poorly researched and factually incorrect clickbait.Question from last November, even referring to macOS, by @paulirish: https://superuser.com/q/1930445/can-i-delete-the-chromes-opt...
With policy setting, debug url, docs in the answers.
One search away.
by cachius
5/6/2026 at 11:24:42 AM
For completeness: The single policy setting name to disable model download is GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/gen-ai-local-founda...The current state can be viewed at the internal debug URL chrome://on-device-internals/
Since January there's a user facing toggle in Settings > System > On-device AI in Chrome Canary https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligenc..., described in Chrome Help Center at https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/16961953https://sup...
by cachius
5/5/2026 at 8:27:47 AM
And that's why we have, promote, and (hopefully) all use Chromium on our Linuxes.Or Firefox of course.
by flossly
5/6/2026 at 12:13:55 AM
Chromium doesn't support this API because it needs a binary blob to run the inference, although in theory it may still be configured to download the weights:https://adsm.dev/posts/prompt-api/#which-browsers-support-th...
by scriptsmith
5/5/2026 at 11:54:41 PM
Chromium on Linux already has Google's AI Mode in the omnibox and the new tab page, so I'm not sure Chromium would be immune to changes like local AI models.by cube00
5/6/2026 at 12:04:13 AM
I'd expect them to be less cheerful about a 4GB bump than Google's team behind Chromeby flossly
5/5/2026 at 8:19:51 AM
If anything I am glad a bit of shift to local llm's. Their gemma4 is pretty powerful for such small model so I guess that's what they are delivering.by pezgrande
5/5/2026 at 8:43:22 PM
Chrome also silently installs a powerful relational database engine without warning or consent.All of your history, trivially searchable. Imagine the waste heat generated by the browser bar conducting thousands of non-consensual searches every time you type.
by Spooky23
5/6/2026 at 2:01:14 AM
SQLite is around 1MB or less. This download is four thousand times larger.by mr_toad
5/5/2026 at 8:54:54 AM
Man the longer all this crap goes on the more I realise Stallman was rightby dwedge
5/5/2026 at 1:14:09 PM
Eating the toenails is sort of like drinking the Koolade but for privacyby k12sosse
5/5/2026 at 6:18:45 PM
If you back up to "intention" it's fully insane to make a GDPR argument against on-device AI. Yes it downloads bits, but those bits are not there to identify you - they are basically a local copy of the internet. This enables private data to be kept on-device. Having no personal data leave the device is fantastic for GDPR compliance.The good point in this article is about how the "AI" features in Chrome all use Google's cloud API and not a local model. That's true and some of it should be local. ("AI mode" uses the Web index, so it fundamentally cannot be local, but there are features that could be.)
by herf
5/5/2026 at 7:30:53 PM
Agreed, strange line of argumentby dgellow
5/5/2026 at 10:44:26 AM
And that will be 4GB per chrome instance I assume? (not profiles, instances) And what happens with each electron app if it uses chrome?languagemodel should be an OS service..
by jbverschoor
5/5/2026 at 11:49:29 AM
Electron uses Chromium and nothing prevents them from disabling it, if it ever ends up there.by kgeist
5/5/2026 at 8:53:11 AM
One upside to this is that it doesn't use Gemma and instead uses Gemini. So at least for Gemini Nano (apparently called XS internally by Google) it means that the weights are now de facto open and you no longer need a current Android phone to get the latest and best model in this class. This also makes it the only open American frontier-level model right now.by sigmoid10
5/5/2026 at 9:14:24 AM
Can you provide any sources for that? I'd like to learn more about this open frontier model.by HumanOstrich
5/5/2026 at 9:41:02 AM
Sources for what? The pareto frontier of LLMs? How Google is pretty much on the line with most of their LLM products? Or this particular model? For the first two you need to look for size/cost vs. accuracy charts. There are tons of them floating around. For the latter there is not much official info except what you can infer by analyzing the weights.bin file that Chrome downloads. But it does mention Gemini in there, so it seems pretty obvious that it is from their proprietary line of models.by sigmoid10
5/5/2026 at 10:11:36 AM
Just because it's called Gemini doesn't mean that it's somehow automatically as comparable with the frontier of small models as well, does it?by lxgr
5/5/2026 at 10:17:36 AM
All Gemini models sit around the frontier, especially if you go to smaller sizes. Google is actually more invested into efficiency than size unlike some of the other big providers.by sigmoid10
5/5/2026 at 10:21:11 AM
Do you have any benchmark details on the on-device Gemini models? I haven't found a lot of public information on these.by lxgr
5/5/2026 at 10:10:16 AM
Sources for your claim that the model being downloaded to Android/Chrome is Gemini instead of Gemma. Other than downloading the bin file myself and analyzing it lol.by HumanOstrich
5/5/2026 at 10:18:31 AM
How about Google itself?https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api
>With the Prompt API, you can send natural language requests to Gemini Nano in the browser.
by sigmoid10
5/5/2026 at 10:36:05 AM
Thanks. Looks like the current Gemini Nano is actually a separate model with the Gemma 3n architecture that has been distilled from Gemini 2.5 Flash[1].Also, the next version of Gemini Nano will be based directly on Gemma 4 (so not distilled, not Gemini at all except for the name)[2].
So no, it's not a frontier model. Those don't run on your phone or in your browser.
[1]: https://developer.android.com/blog/posts/ml-kit-s-prompt-api...
[2]: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/04/AI-Core-De...
by HumanOstrich
5/5/2026 at 12:30:10 PM
Oh, now I see your problem. You confused the pareto frontier with the pure scale frontier. They are very much not the same.Also, distillation is how most of these smaller models are made from the biggest models. That process largely defines the frontier along most of the curve.
by sigmoid10
5/5/2026 at 1:32:02 PM
> This also makes it the only open American frontier-level model right now.I'm not going to keep arguing with you. If you want to keep arguing, go to https://gemini.google.com/. Gemini knows what a frontier model is and it knows that Gemini Nano is fundamentally different from the other Gemini models. For one, it uses the Gemma architecture. And the next version of Gemini Nano is built directly on Gemma 4.
As for your original claim that I quoted, there are other "open American frontier-level models" by your definition. Like Gemma 4.
by HumanOstrich
5/7/2026 at 12:33:28 PM
I'm surprised how you try to evade the facts and even try to bring in Gemini in a vain attempt to support your argumentation, when a simple google search would have already pointed you at things like this:https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioner...
or this:
https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text/overall/pareto
The lines in these charts is literally what the frontier is on a technical level. None of what I said has any ambiguous terminology. This is common language in the field. Neither is the fact that google cares a lot about this. I don't see why you still feel the need to argue about any of this.
by sigmoid10
5/5/2026 at 11:27:21 PM
What’s wrong with shipping a local llm? This is quite nice IMO is there a privacy concern with running it locally? I already have a few games I wrote web based using this and it’s quiet nice to not need a server to run my game in pure HTML from my file systemby taf2
5/6/2026 at 2:29:51 AM
Because it's huge and people were counting on having that disk space.by phyzome
5/6/2026 at 12:32:25 PM
4gb? Maybe on a raspberry pie it’s a problem - I’m sure there is a chrome flag to disableby taf2
5/7/2026 at 3:47:51 PM
Come off it. People legitimately have limited drive space.by phyzome
5/6/2026 at 1:47:44 AM
Not too long ago, someone submitted an AI demo to HN that resulted in a 3.1GB download upon visiting the page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47823460It reminds me of the "dialup warnings" common 2 decades ago on huge pages (often containing many images). Yes, bandwidth and storage has gotten cheaper, but the unwanted waste should still be called out. I'm not even anti-AI, having waited several hours recently to get some local models to experiment with, but that's because I wanted to and made the decision to use that bandwidth.
by userbinator
5/5/2026 at 2:44:34 PM
Wow, so glad to see this on HN because yesterday coincidentally I told codex to figure out what was taking up space on my computer and lo and behold their was an ai model in my chrome folder... And i certainly didnt recall downloading that myself.by Johnny_Bonk
5/5/2026 at 1:29:16 PM
I am trying to wrap my head around this: if I remove Chrome Browser, will I reclaim the disk space for this model? Thanks in advance.by mark_l_watson
5/5/2026 at 2:07:02 PM
I think this policy will disable the automatic download of the model:https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#GenAILocalFoundati...
The prompt API can be tested here: https://chrome.dev/web-ai-demos/prompt-api-playground/
It would be really helpful if there was a way to download the model to a central location, so multiple users on a single system could easily share it.
by dmarinus
5/5/2026 at 10:06:00 AM
I use brave. Firefox doesn't work in my qemu VM with (none pass through) hardware acceleration, it just crashes the VM.Brave has always just worked for me and seems light on memory usage. Dunno why anyone would use chrome.
by tim-projects
5/5/2026 at 12:28:37 PM
If you're not aware already, there's also Brave origin: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/38561489788173-W...A lighter Brave.
by LelouBil
5/6/2026 at 4:20:27 AM
AI generated header image and a heavy scent of LLM prose, but this guy still complains about the "insane climate costs" of google's 4GB on device LLM?by doctoboggan
5/5/2026 at 9:24:07 PM
Alternative to archive.phWorks without Javascript, no CAPTCHA, no DDoS, no geoblocking, etc.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260504192142if_/https://www.th...
by 1vuio0pswjnm7
5/5/2026 at 10:36:13 PM
Hard to believe it's over 10 years since they first started pulling crap like this by downloading a binary to listen for 'OK Google' (including on chromium builds): https://lwn.net/Articles/648392/by joecool1029
5/5/2026 at 8:29:16 AM
This has to be some kind of a limited rollout, since none of my machines have this AI model installed even when Chrome is updated to the latest version. No indication that anything is being downloaded, since after updating to the latest version of Chrome on this machine, I'm seeing <100 kB/s download speeds for the entire system.by Hamuko
5/5/2026 at 10:08:28 AM
On one level, I can't figure out how bent out of shape to get over this (but read on). Software I use downloads updates all the time, adds new features all the time, and I mostly don't ask for any of it.So if you see this as just a new feature that provides some on-device AI, it's a bit, so what? A new feature? The last GT7 or Flight Sim patch was bigger than this, what's the big deal, etc.
However, that's not really what's going on. It theory Chrome gives you a local LLM that can provide local AI powered features. In practice, everything gets sent to the cloud anyway so the local LLM seems mostly to exist as a disguise for that, which is shady AF.
As others have pointed out, the solution is https://www.firefox.com/. And whilst it's been trendy on HN for several years to slag off Firefox and Mozilla, I went back to Firefox as my daily driver several years ago, and Chrome's high-handed enforcement of Manifest V3 extensions (meaning no full fat uBlock Origin) has only served to cement that decision.
It's mostly been great. The only downside is that some sites don't work properly on Firefox, and I'm 99.999% sure that's not Firefox's fault.
For example, Paypal's post-login verification step breaks so every time I want to buy something using Paypal I have to switch to Chrome. And, no, disabling uBlock Origin and other extensions on Paypal doesn't help - I've done this already. Seriously, Paypal, it's been months: will you please just fix signing in and paying on Firefox, please?
And many sites will assume you're a bot first and ask questions later if you hit them with anything other than Chrome or Safari... which is also extremely lame and scummy.
by bartread
5/5/2026 at 1:08:26 PM
I don't think that adding the feature is the issue here, but instead Google deciding it needs to push an order of magnitude more data and store it on your device. I can understand wanting to at least re-evaluate your use of a tool when that happens.If you were to install Chrome fresh, what if it was a 4GB+ download from their website? I would at least pause. For reference, a regular offline installer is 140MB.
by mat_epice
5/5/2026 at 11:46:27 AM
Weird, I access PayPal through FF all the time. It's probably one of those weird geographical differences or something. One thing I did see is that at least one site (AliExpress) doesn't initiate the redirect after the payment, but still accepted the payment.by projektfu
5/5/2026 at 5:23:42 PM
I have the PayPal on Firefox problem. Once I see it, I just give up and use a credit card instead.by degrees57
5/5/2026 at 5:43:30 PM
...so what?If Chrome had installed 4GB for some other tooling that most people don't need, would anyone care? My operating system installs with a million default packages that I don't need. Users install applications with optional features all the time. Applications install additional tooling so that they'll function all the time.
To the other point: of course Claude Desktop modifies the browser--that's how it works. Most apps install integrations with existing apps. Often apps install a whole collection of plugins, even for things the user doesn't use, so they're available if the user does start using the other apps.
The fact that this happens to be AI-related is a moot point. The environment concern is utter nonsense. They're not using everyone's browser to power AI for others as some kind of shared collective resource. 4GB is not a lot of data in the grand scheme of things (beyond general application bloat). I have more than 4GB worth of ads shoved in my face every month.
The legal argument is facile as well. When you install any application, its terms of service cover functional updates and additions. You don't have to explicitly consent to all of them.
Other than the size of it, I don't have any problem with anything this article is mentioning.
This is a huge nothingburger that only caught peoples' attention because of the irrelevant mention of AI.
by caymanjim
5/5/2026 at 8:57:15 PM
> If Chrome had installed 4GB for some other tooling that most people don't need, would anyone care?Of course I would. It’s already the largest application on my computer, and I only keep it around for when a site doesn’t render right in Firefox.
This kind of size increase clearly pushes it over the line for me and it’s getting uninstalled.
Have you seen SSD prices recently?
by dml2135
5/5/2026 at 9:04:17 PM
I was overly-dismissive of the 4GB part.The author's main points were all the other alarmist nonsense, though.
by caymanjim
5/5/2026 at 7:20:21 PM
I think any program suddenly x5'ing its install size would raise eyebrows as to its purpose.by liminis
5/5/2026 at 2:31:42 PM
Wait for Ladybug to come out, it'll bury all the company-controlled browsers.by jll29
5/5/2026 at 2:35:43 PM
Ladybird?by MrDrMcCoy
5/5/2026 at 7:12:37 PM
600 comments and yet no one's questioning the math, just running with "4GB" even though the fsevents log literally says that the file is the result of an unpack operation?The file might be 4GB but the transfer sure as heck wasn't, so what are we even talking about? How much data is actually transferred? Can someone just grab that weights.bin file and zip it up with max compression and report a more realistic number that we can do the math with, if the number is even worth doing the math for?
by TheRealPomax
5/5/2026 at 8:58:59 PM
That's timely. I had been thinking of trying Chrome out again, but it looks like it's in my interests to remain fully de-Googled.by hansvm
5/5/2026 at 6:40:26 PM
The future is local models. This makes sense and I wouldn't be surprised if future web standards require this to be swappable so that you can use a model of your choice as the intelligence in the various APIs. Being able to use summarization and text extraction locally will be a powerful enabler. Apple's ability to copy text out of photos etc. is really useful.by arjie
5/6/2026 at 12:02:25 AM
OK, I rarely use Chrome (I like Safari and only ever open Chrome on the increasingly rare occasions when a site doesn’t work in Safari and lately it’s turned out that the site is just broken) but looking at the article and the comments here, I can’t figure out where this 4GB is supposed to be stored. None of the likely cases panned out when I looked.by dhosek
5/6/2026 at 3:23:00 PM
This is why I switched to Brave a long time ago. It’s far from perfect, but it would never do anything like that.by tithos
5/5/2026 at 8:59:38 AM
Good time to try Orion! https://orionbrowser.comby peterspath
5/5/2026 at 11:06:33 AM
Better not, it's too buggy and sluggish, it's more in a beta stage on desktop. I've been using it for the last year but not anymore.by zihotki
5/6/2026 at 6:37:43 AM
It is very ironic that this post comes from "The Privacy Guy", given that the whole point of this model is to run inference on your own device rather than sending queries to the cloud, which is also much less power intensive than sending a query to OpenAI.by fastball
5/5/2026 at 6:40:33 PM
This is total flamebaitby blurbleblurble
5/5/2026 at 2:25:12 PM
Google/Alphabet is a big companyOn the one hand, Waymo seems to have a better safety record than Tesla does. That's not nothing. For someone nominally in charge of SpaceX like Elon is, it's a red flag
On the other, Google does things like this with Chrome, and also they arguably censor. It's irritating
by alex1138
5/5/2026 at 8:36:36 AM
Well, npm install …
by tzury
5/5/2026 at 10:28:31 AM
that's a willing act - you are actively asking npm to download something, and accepting it might be terrible for you.Here chrome is just installing things behind your back, whether you really want it or not.
by toyg
5/5/2026 at 12:16:45 PM
Never use “npm install”, only “npm ci”. Using “npm install” is a willing act to run fresh exploits.by yearolinuxdsktp
5/6/2026 at 1:10:27 PM
This sounds just like how Tesla seems to be doing AI training on parked Teslas now, without asking permission.He even boasts about it on twitter.
Meanwhile car batteries are draining faster. Costing the consumer electricity & battery cycle life.
by tckk
5/6/2026 at 8:46:40 PM
I can no longer run Google Chrome on a new powerful $1,500 2025 laptop. I don't know what it is doing, but about thirty tabs just doing basic browsing and Gmail eats all of my resources.by silexia
5/5/2026 at 5:10:40 PM
The alternative is an AI model hosted on their servers (cause whether we like it or not)by anshumankmr
5/6/2026 at 10:17:30 PM
I'd rather they pay for the electricity.by timbit42
5/5/2026 at 5:03:38 PM
There's simply no reason to be using Google Chrome in 2026. Purge it from your computer and install a less user hostile browser.Google Chrome just exists to make Google money at your expense, to sell your data and deplete your battery.
by zarzavat
5/5/2026 at 5:09:07 PM
What do you suggest as alternatives? Currently I'm using firefox which seems ok but I know they are propped up by google somewhatby marliechiller
5/6/2026 at 7:21:10 AM
Firefox, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Ungoogled Chromium.Firefox is dependent on Google for funding, but not for source code. Brave is dependent on Google for source code, but not for funding. Safari is dependent on neither but Apple locks down the experience.
Hopefully Ladybird will deliver us from our Google dependence in a year or two. It's already usable for very light web browsing. I wrote this comment on Ladybird.
by zarzavat
5/5/2026 at 6:11:24 PM
keep using firefoxby guizadillas
5/5/2026 at 5:30:20 PM
Braveby brcmthrowaway
5/6/2026 at 2:31:40 AM
I mean, if your choices are "propped up somewhat by Google" and "literally run by literally Google"...by phyzome
5/6/2026 at 12:26:30 AM
I’m guessing there’s some UX metric out there, that if they pre-load downloading the model, the user is more likely to stick with trying things out; rather than have them wait for a hefty download to complete.by dnemmers
5/5/2026 at 9:24:06 PM
They do this so they don't have to host the model on Google servers and then have claims of "Google spies on chrome users and uploads all their data to Google servers, including private dm's".by londons_explore
5/5/2026 at 4:28:05 PM
Has anyone tried out to chmod 400 the download directories? Perhaps that prevents the whole thing to work...I haven't touched a Chrome browser in a very long time and I just hope that other vendors don't take a similar route.
by liendolucas
5/5/2026 at 9:13:51 AM
Why the hell can't this just be an extension in the first place? Why does it have to be bolted in by default? Why does Google and by extension its employees have this constant need to assault and violate me with this garbage?by kotaKat
5/5/2026 at 9:45:04 PM
I'm not a fan of this being downloaded by default. Still, I very much prefer that, if something if Chrome uses a LLM, that's done via a local LLM rather than by via an API callby wrxd
5/5/2026 at 9:51:45 PM
I would prefer they use their own electricity to run these LLM that I don't need. Api calls are fine imo, running it on my computer isn't.by aucisson_masque
5/5/2026 at 10:00:06 PM
How much electricity is too much?by postalrat
5/6/2026 at 8:13:16 PM
I’m not sure why this is getting so much hate. This is the future people, AI is a primitive of modern software, just be thankful chrome ships this locallyby miguelspizza
5/6/2026 at 1:05:45 PM
I'm just going to say this: Wouldn't load for me in Chrome, but the article loaded instantly in Edge... I never use Edge, I was just curious.by LurkandComment
5/6/2026 at 5:20:17 PM
Why a 4GB model? I just tested Firefox's AI; when you long press a link and agree to enable summaries it downloads a mere 369MB model.by hotsalad
5/5/2026 at 6:04:30 PM
Curious how this thread would have been if Firefox did that.by bergheim
5/5/2026 at 6:16:10 PM
same or worst since at least people put Firefox in a pedestal, but they didn't, they actually pushed to stop thisby guizadillas
5/6/2026 at 2:00:06 PM
A 4GB silent payload is completely unacceptable for a browser. The bandwidth and storage waste alone should make this an opt-in feature.by danborn26
5/5/2026 at 5:14:40 PM
These people owe me a RAM upgrade. This is out of control.by josefritzishere
5/5/2026 at 4:58:15 PM
If you use PSD (profile-sync-daemon or similar) to mount browser profiles to RAM to lessen SSD/NVMe wear. This might be an issue for you.by Yaqub_W
5/5/2026 at 9:06:21 AM
If only Chrome had deferred implementing delta updates back in 2009 (?), they could have introduced it along with this to make it a net zero change!by farfatched
5/5/2026 at 9:05:47 PM
"sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions" ? Is that what 0.0000001% of the worlds population produces in one day?by IvanK_net
5/5/2026 at 9:17:53 AM
I can't read the article (503) but does anyone know why someone calling themselves thatprivacyguy is installing Google Chrome?by drcongo
5/5/2026 at 10:32:43 AM
Maybe in order to document a privacy problem with it that they heard about.by a96
5/5/2026 at 2:24:35 PM
Botnet browser does botnet things, not surprised.by midtake
5/5/2026 at 8:46:42 PM
Nowadays I wonder if it's best practice to run everything in a desktop VM and not on your actual computer...by caycep
5/5/2026 at 4:26:16 PM
It's funny how they steal 4gb of local storage but also will sell you cloud storage when you run low on space.by t1234s
5/5/2026 at 9:28:44 PM
In related news, I’ve uninstalled Google Chrome on all my devices. I strongly recommend you all do the same.by antonvs
5/5/2026 at 12:57:54 PM
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.by graynk
5/5/2026 at 8:02:53 PM
The question I have is whether there is a means of disabling that download or preventing that functionality.by fuzzy_biscuit
5/5/2026 at 8:59:27 PM
You could probably truncate the weights to be much smaller and it would just cause a runtime error. Or replace it with mostly zeros. Unlikely that they checksum the file. But ultimately it is a losing battle -- in browser LLM is coming, and future APIs will expose it to js, and it will become essential.by angry_octet
5/5/2026 at 6:45:22 PM
So we've all got a local LLM on our machine.Can it be the basis for nano-openclaw?
Can I use it to run a Karpathy optimization loop?
by mikewarot
5/5/2026 at 10:10:27 AM
Google abuses users.You can also ask why the US government fails to protect the users. Corporate dictatorship at its finest.
by shevy-java
5/7/2026 at 1:49:59 PM
Google Chrome is malware.by t0mpr1c3
5/5/2026 at 11:34:45 PM
Chrome has no moat and is always evil. I advocate against it whenever it comes up.by xbar
5/6/2026 at 12:47:10 PM
Is this just for mobile devices or does this impact desktops as well?by thrownaway561
5/5/2026 at 1:26:51 PM
This is egregious and the only people who can get away with it are these Big Tech companies. The legal analysis is moot. They have operated with impunity for decades. The law, especially with AI, only applies to organizations that Big Tech and the government want to eliminate. Rules for thee, not for me.by kittikitti
5/5/2026 at 8:19:08 AM
I thought using local rather than cloud AI was pretty universally agreed to be good?by cubefox
5/5/2026 at 8:36:14 AM
The universally agreed upon good is leaving the choice to use AI or not to the end user.by wartywhoa23
5/5/2026 at 10:05:57 AM
There is a secret, third option.by pjc50
5/5/2026 at 11:37:25 AM
https://c.tenor.com/odyVsZbC-OYAAAAC/tenor.gifby cubefox
5/5/2026 at 9:08:28 AM
Except these weights are barely used. Read the article.by zekrioca
5/5/2026 at 9:19:12 AM
Thanks for reminding, it was a moment of weakness. Here is the relevant quote:> the features that do use the local model (Help-Me-Write in <textarea>, tab-group AI suggestions, smart paste, page summary) are buried in textarea-context menus and tab-group right-click menus
by cubefox
5/5/2026 at 3:19:55 PM
I wonder what this model will do and if anyone can map out its capabilities?by tmaly
5/6/2026 at 3:43:48 PM
This is nothing, compared to crimes that Windows Update does.by predkambrij
5/5/2026 at 8:52:57 AM
Sorry but the whole climate angle on this is extremely stupid and needs to be challenged. I have noticed this new phenomenon of people using climate as a trump card to oppose any thing they don’t like.The thing about these kind of arguments is that any economic activity or any sort of action involves some load on climate. The magnitudes are important.
In this case: a single hamburger does the same amount of emissions as 50 such downloads. What’s really the point of this kind of virtue signalling?
by simianwords
5/5/2026 at 10:37:14 AM
> In this case: a single hamburger does the same amount of emissions as 50 such downloadsHamburger is usually held up as a grotesque example in climate talk and can't be consumed with a clear conscious so are downloads insanely worse than we thought or is a hamburger not even in the same realm of climate damage as usually claimed.
by whywhywhywhy
5/5/2026 at 3:34:20 PM
Both are not too consequential and downloads even more soby simianwords
5/5/2026 at 9:07:52 AM
There is consumer demand for hamburgers. There is no consumer demand for AI, hence how egregious that it also comes with negative externalities.by potatototoo99
5/5/2026 at 9:27:15 AM
I have to tell you something: there is consumer demand for AI.by newtonsmethod
5/5/2026 at 10:06:39 AM
We'll never know, since companies seem determined to make it non-optional.by pjc50
5/5/2026 at 5:10:06 PM
This is a very good way to put it.AI is being pushed so hard from the top down by every executive (who have been practically foaming at the mouth about AI for years now) it might as well be extruding from every port and seam on people's devices as if it were a buzzword/fomo diarrhea of some sort.
by stalfosknight
5/5/2026 at 11:05:16 AM
I for one would love to see someone try and shove hamburgers down everybody's throats in order to increase consumer demand.by shmeeed
5/5/2026 at 8:15:39 AM
it's so absurd at this point. isn't chrome already so much abused.by DineshKruplani
5/6/2026 at 1:13:06 PM
Well I hope it's not installed into the roaming profileby ChrisRR
5/5/2026 at 11:10:29 AM
Does anyone else find the writing in the article to be overdramatic? Including a 4gb is a negligible amount of space for current hardware and Chrome is not known as the browser to run on resource constrained devices. To put 4gb in context, I currently have 2 *tabs* open that nearly take up 4gb. The fact Chrome also has a way to disable this makes it kind of a nothingburger in my opinion.> The roughly 4 GB × N devices of disk-storage cost, sustained, on user hardware. SSDs have a per-GB embodied carbon cost of approximately 0.16 kg CO2e per GB of NAND manufactured [18]
The estimated environmental aspect of the download also seems like an overblown point, noted for sensationalism. There are always hand-wavy numbers involved and I had to look no further than the quote above to find evidence of this. The reference for [18], "The dirty secret of SSDs: embodied carbon", incorrectly links to "Toward Carbon-Aware Networking" and makes no mention of the environmental cost of SSDs. After looking up "The Dirty Secret of SSDs: Embodied Carbon" myself, I was able to see the same methodologies as I was expecting used [1].
> We conducted an analysis encompassing 94 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) reports, which collectively quantify the embodied cost of SSDs. Owing to the scarcity of direct and up-to-date LCA studies focused specifically on SSDs. We compiled a dataset comprising LCA reports pertaining to Server, Workstation, Desktop, Laptop, and Chromebook products, all of which feature SSDs
All these studies rely on metrics extrapolated from layered assumptions and end up being used by those who try to use them as objective numbers.
by derangedHorse
5/5/2026 at 11:11:29 AM
4gb isn't really a negligible amount, given the amount of desktops and laptops sold with just a 256gb ssdby Zekio
5/5/2026 at 12:10:32 PM
Exactly. Nand is expensive. I upgraded what my laptop came with but after installing a few games, cloning repositories over the years, various projects I've done, and other regular use, it's perpetually full. 4GB is probably about half the space I have free at any given timeWhich apparently means it'll never install btw, even if I were to run Chrome. Another comment said they check for 22GB free space
by Aachen
5/6/2026 at 10:13:19 PM
Even so, I would still let them download double that, if they reduced the RAM consumption in halfby guilhas
5/5/2026 at 11:18:48 AM
> Including a 4gb is a negligible amount of space for current hardware and Chrome is not known as the browser to run on resource constrained devices.4gb definitely isn’t a negligible amount of space on most people’s devices.
The quite successful it would seem MacBook Neo has 256GB of storage in its base configuration.
A MacBook Air and a basic sub $1000 Dell laptop starts at 512GB.
> To put 4gb in context, I currently have 2 tabs open that nearly take up 4gb.
You are conflating disk and memory.
> The fact Chrome also has a way to disable this makes it kind of a nothingburger in my opinion.
There’s a reason they picked an opt-out model for this, and not an opt-in approach.
But I also see the point in it. We recently did a hackathon, and I considered relying on Gemma 4 for privacy considerations. The local model could interpret the user’s natural language request and derive less privacy revealing requests to form based on that.
But then, a web app that shows people a loading screen while it downloads a 4GB model probably wouldn’t be a best-selling UX.
by ElFitz
5/5/2026 at 11:29:25 AM
> You are conflating disk and memory.I never conflated anything. I said it's a neglible amount of space for current hardware, which I still believe.
If anything, the fact that I think the amount of space is acceptable for the amount of ram a modern laptop has exaggerates the point.
> There’s a reason they picked an opt-out model for this, and not an opt-in approach.
That's the approach they take for most of their features.
> But then, a web app that shows people a loading screen while it downloads a 4GB model probably wouldn’t be a best-selling UX.
Which seems to be the motivation of having these local models embedded in the browser's available resources: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api
by derangedHorse
5/5/2026 at 10:05:31 PM
> I never conflated anything. I said it's a neglible amount of space for current hardware, which I still believe.>
> If anything, the fact that I think the amount of space is acceptable for the amount of ram a modern laptop has exaggerates the point.
How does the memory usage of your browser tabs relate to the amount of disk space taken up by the downloaded models?
> That's the approach they take for most of their features.
And there’s a reason for that. Same one the EU forced companies to make consent to marketing and consumer data sharing opt-in and not opt-out: we have a bias.
> Which seems to be the motivation of having these local models embedded in the browser's available resources
Sooo… we are basically agreeing on the fact it could prove to be useful? In the long run, if and when they decide to pick a model that isn’t half brain dead (apparently it’s based on Gemma 3).
by ElFitz
5/6/2026 at 10:52:14 AM
> How does the memory usage of your browser tabs relate to the amount of disk space taken up by the downloaded models?I am talking about space in general. Data size. The relation of data stored in one place vs another is the fact they both store *data*. The components to store data can be cheaper or more expensive based on how it's architected. The fact I still see 4GB as an acceptable cost in ram exaggerates the point because it shows that I'm okay with 4GB being consumed in a relatively expensive component used for data storage (meaning I'd obviously be okay with it being stored on hard disk).
> if and when they decide to pick a model that isn’t half brain dead (apparently it’s based on Gemma 3)
Gemma 3 is far from brain dead and can be used for a variety of different tasks, translation being one I've personally used it for.
by derangedHorse
5/6/2026 at 2:03:17 PM
I have been thinking about this for 24 hours now and I have to say this has me mad as hell. Software companies treat the users like fucking cattle to be led to whatever slaughter will be most profitable this quarter. Capital has fully inverted the hopes and promise of software I glimpsed in my youth.by Kapura
5/5/2026 at 4:43:15 PM
on desktop you have read/write access to the chrome "app data"on android aicore: mediatek, qualcomm, aosp vendors, and google will pull down models you cant touch
by rmac
5/5/2026 at 5:37:38 PM
Why they insert their "DNA" without my consent?by m3kw9
5/5/2026 at 8:48:24 PM
Masterclass. Hope some qualified lawyers just got wet.by ProofHouse
5/5/2026 at 7:12:58 PM
So that's why Chrome kills my PC's memory?by J8K357R
5/5/2026 at 11:47:44 PM
Rolled my eyes when this article got to the unlawful and climate parts. Rolled my eyes harder when I clicked to the homepage and saw what the main sell of this site is. I'd ask why this is so high on HN but it's so tailor-made for this audience I'm more disappointed than surprised.by llbbdd
5/5/2026 at 3:02:17 PM
What a massive fail on Google's part. They could have given you the option to auth to Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT (or whatever) and provided a meaningfully better product and experience. But instead, they chose to push their crap on everyone. This is the bullshit I expect from Microsoft, not Google.by bastawhiz
5/5/2026 at 2:51:32 PM
chrome://on-device-internals/..will tell you everything you need to know - including model state, file path, device capabilities, etc.
And there's a single button to uninstall the model.
There is also the ability to load a model from a central location, as suggested by another commenter here, although I haven't tested it yet.
The official chrome.dev Prompt API Playground linked in the thread doesn't work.
Chatgpt made a me tiny chrome extension to test the prompt and summariser api's when they announced last year - my laptop wasn't capable the time but these newer models are obviously smaller and more efficient, so it has sprung into life.
Full prompt and code is on pastebin `7Ja3ATHZ` if anyone wants to test quickly. It summarises the current page and brainstorms app ideas based on the summary.
by gmaszz
5/5/2026 at 3:25:45 PM
While the official Prompt API Playground doesn't work, the one for the Summarization API does...https://chrome.dev/web-ai-demos/summarization-api-playground...
and you can watch it generate the output token by token in the Event Logs:
chrome://on-device-internals/
by gmaszz
5/6/2026 at 6:57:04 AM
You can load a model from this page but it's only for testing purposes on this page and it won't be used for the Prompt API.by dmarinus
5/6/2026 at 8:22:52 AM
They want u to buy more and more storageby OliverSmith34
5/5/2026 at 3:43:56 PM
A 4gb unbidden download is insane! I'm still running machines with 30gb HDs.I blame the kids these days (waggles fist), downloading their Pokiman shows at 4-5gb a pop! No respect for their disk space limited elders.
I'm actually gonna have to uninstall Chrome from a few machines tonight.
by HlessClaudesman
5/5/2026 at 2:49:41 PM
It's a good time to be using Vivaldi.by bityard
5/5/2026 at 9:52:38 AM
I think this is a bad framing.Javascript running on a page can use a feature that requires a model to be downloaded.
I have pages that use it, or other LLM models via LiteRT or HuggingFace transformers.js.
I try to warn the user, but that is my responsibility as a page author. I like that this is enabling the web platform to remain competitive.
The author is pulling a long bow by trying to claim this is some GDPR violation. Have they ever used the web? There are inefficient sites everywhere, with autoplaying video etc.
4GB isn't nothing, but if a page wants to use it then hopefully it is useful to the user!
by nl
5/6/2026 at 3:18:06 PM
well, if it's already there and keeps coming back, can I use it?A local Gemini Nano might be useful!
by mring33621
5/5/2026 at 1:41:56 PM
Like the recent copilot silent signing incident, the without consent part is blatant foul move.If you don't like be treated like anything but human, you should seriously consider replacing chrome with ungoogled chromium or other browsers.
by RandyOrion
5/5/2026 at 10:46:46 AM
I can't for the life of me understand how this browser has become the world's most used. It's literally from an ad company.by ulfw
5/5/2026 at 8:12:51 PM
The majority of comments seem to think this is not a big deal. Not surprising from this crowd, but disconcerting nonetheless.by luke727
5/5/2026 at 9:51:21 PM
Agreed, very disappointing. I wonder if this was 40gb would it still be celebrated? 100gb? At what point, if ever would this be recognized as an unwanted waste of space?by AmazingEveryDay
5/6/2026 at 3:33:28 AM
unfortunately you have probably consented and its between the lines of user agreementby caonidaye
5/6/2026 at 10:02:30 PM
It would be better a systemwide download? Of courseMaybe manually point to a local endpoint with one of the multiple 100s of GBs of models that I already downloaded? Even better
Don't even know what the model is for... but as things are, one of the alternatives would probably be send high amounts of user data to google which is worse. I would personally pay to have a 4GB download and keep my data/privacy
So this is an odd take from a "privacy guy"
by guilhas
5/10/2026 at 2:02:26 AM
I concentby lugut
5/10/2026 at 2:02:16 AM
I consentby lugut
5/5/2026 at 9:25:16 PM
all in storage stocks! imagine how much extra storage the world over is required...by alliao
5/5/2026 at 4:43:25 PM
Is it true for Chromium too?by fithisux
5/5/2026 at 9:38:57 PM
The whole Prompt API is poorly designed. Devs will end up trying to fine tune very specific prompts out of necessity, only to have them break with the next model update.The logic around not providing access to model version to prevent fingerprinting is laughable when the suggestion to counteract fingerprinting from prompting is the model should only update when user agent string updates. Just put the damn API behind a explicit user permission.
by notnullorvoid
5/5/2026 at 7:12:59 PM
is this only for desktop or will they bloat phones and tablets too?by pier25
5/5/2026 at 3:39:44 PM
Talk about a nothing burger. "OOh they downloaded 4GB!" You mean 30 minutes of Netflix? The carbon emissions thing apparently isn't a big deal since the author says the browser's AI use is cloud based anyway, and offloading AI compute from the DC to the browser isn't really increasing carbon is it? Reads like another AI doomer trying to find something to get angry about.by 0xbadcafebee
5/5/2026 at 7:18:52 PM
>offloading AI compute from the DC to the browser isn't really increasing carbon is it?That is actually an interesting question. I would think that any given amount of processing is at least slightly more efficient when running on large-scale cloud hardware, but I have no idea whether it's a few percent or 75%. There's also some overhead, so maybe there's no gain for smaller jobs.
by kbelder
5/5/2026 at 9:25:27 PM
Try to look outside your bubble. Millions of people still have monthly quotas on their internet plan, and 4GB can be a big chunk of it (possibly over all of it, in some cases).Google should have asked.
by tredre3
5/5/2026 at 8:39:16 PM
Does Chromium do this?by Animats
5/6/2026 at 2:11:03 PM
then dont use google chrome..i'm fine with itby beanjuiceII
5/5/2026 at 8:48:00 AM
I feel this is great in combination with an agent like OpenClaw or Hermes.by apexalpha
5/5/2026 at 9:44:24 PM
That's why I hate Google. They do the same shit that Microsoft and treat their customer as crap.by aucisson_masque
5/5/2026 at 5:10:30 PM
It's annoyingly huge, but is this worse than that? It's software - it does stuff and takes up space. If it takes up more space than you think the stuff is worth, then complain it's bloated, sure, but I am not sure why "silently" is being thrown around.by thenoblesunfish
5/5/2026 at 1:42:25 PM
Time to switch.by coldtea
5/5/2026 at 10:23:50 AM
>Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent.Oh my god thats terrible I hope you continue this article in this mode and dont pivot to some unsubstantiated bs claim that makes absolutely no sense...
>At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.
sigh.
Imagine if everyone on the planet start using a memory hogging, cpu chugging browser application what a terrible hazard that would be for the climate.
Oh and it might have an AI component in it.
This claim is worse than the AI in data centers boiling the earth claims.
We can measure carbon released down to the watt. If you have an issue with people using power, shut up and talk to your government about carbon taxation/moving to alternative power sources. trying to shame some power users, quite arbitrarily isn't just senseless its self defeating. Its a measurement problem, the second people start getting shaky measurements of what their neighbors are doing, they start trying to shift the blame.
by protocolture
5/5/2026 at 8:42:17 AM
it also installs an entire remote desktop stack on your computer without consent, and video codecs, and pdf reader... what is new here?by nsonha
5/5/2026 at 6:00:48 PM
> Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.OH MY GOODNESS, this is the WORST headline.
If Google Chrome comes with an AI model, and you install Chrome of your own free will, you just gave consent.
The "climate costs" are happening whether or not the AI is there. Sure, maybe it makes the hardware work a bit harder, but like, come on. I'm still using my computer anyway. YOU are the one costing the climate, not Google. You're the one turning the "On" button on.
I don't even know why headlines like these are taken seriously.
by djha-skin
5/5/2026 at 6:10:18 PM
consent implies people know what they are downloading but this is a silent feature they are adding. regular people download Chrome to just use a browser, they don't consent to running an AI model.by guizadillas
5/5/2026 at 10:20:55 AM
So typical. Just imagining the consequences for someone with chronically low disk space, like me. Luckily I'm a Firefox person, though I use Vivaldi now and then.by skeledrew
5/5/2026 at 11:25:25 AM
> The pattern was: install on user launch of product A, write configuration into the user's installs of products B, C, D, E, F, G, H without asking. Reach across vendor trust boundaries. No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually, every time Claude Desktop is launched.God, I'm SICK of this AI slop style. After ingesting terabytes of pirated books you'd expect a little bit more variety in it's writing.
by kasabali
5/5/2026 at 12:02:51 PM
Like 2/3 posts on HN now have this "No X. No Y. No Z." pattern. It's one of strong signals for me that the author didn't bother and just copy pasted their LLM's output as is. And the LLM mostly likely was pointed at some other resource to write the article, and I'd rather read the original. I think HN needs a policy to replace AI slop articles with the original articles/announcements etc. once detected, and technically the guidelines already cover it: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.">After ingesting terabytes of pirated books you'd expect a little bit more variety in it's writing.
I think it's the result of post-training. The original base model most likely had a less slopy style. This style is what AI companies think is a good style (they specifically train for it).
by kgeist
5/5/2026 at 10:49:39 PM
Another reason to switch to Firefox.by methuselah_in
5/5/2026 at 11:30:20 AM
That's crazy just another reason I've been degoogling my phone.by TH3F4llen1
5/6/2026 at 9:16:44 AM
local: FUCK YOU GOOGLEcloud: FUCK YOU GOOGLE
by WhereIsTheTruth
5/5/2026 at 8:18:41 AM
This is a bit disingenuous. If you install Chrome, you install Chrome and all it's parts. They don't ask your consent for individual parts because that would be absurd. If you don't want Chrome and all its parts, don't use it.by flanked-evergl
5/5/2026 at 8:53:41 AM
If I install Chrome, I expect it to take a few hundred MBs and then only take up additional space in a controlled and transparent manner - for its cache, for example. For me, secretly adding 4GB after installation is a bit too much.If you're okay with 4GB being added, where would you draw a line? What if it downloaded a 40GB file? 400GB?
by mft_
5/5/2026 at 10:56:40 AM
Personally I draw the line where Chrome becomes worse than alternatives, and then I switch.Lately Firefox has been getting better, but I still prefer Chrome for almost all my needs, so I stick to it. This barely even makes a difference to me. If it was 400GB however it would make a difference to me, and I would make more of an effort to switch to something else.
by flanked-evergl
5/5/2026 at 12:05:36 PM
I fail to see scenario where Chrome is better than almost any Chromium alternative with exemption of Google account sync.by Markoff
5/5/2026 at 12:27:07 PM
Then you don't have to use it.by flanked-evergl
5/5/2026 at 4:15:48 PM
I was just curious why would anyone use Chrome over other superior Chromium alternatives (Vivaldi, Brave, etc.) other than Google account syncing (which I can understand can be pretty big deal for many).by Markoff
5/5/2026 at 8:23:37 AM
Chrome is the default browser on Android.by SwellJoe
5/5/2026 at 8:31:36 AM
One would imagine that the model could be shared on Android and not be part of chrome. Maybe this way it’s simpler or is compatible with regulations.by yoz-y
5/5/2026 at 1:53:10 PM
This is not a reasonable size for something that's "just another part of Chrome", this blows up the file size by many timesby circuit10
5/5/2026 at 8:37:16 AM
If only there was an orange canine coming to help usby PufPufPuf
5/5/2026 at 12:04:19 PM
...or some Italian composerby Markoff
5/5/2026 at 8:29:23 AM
[flagged]by elashri
5/5/2026 at 9:20:52 AM
I use Firefox as my main browser but occasionally run into Chrome requirements for certain web apps so end up begrudgingly installing it. I'm in the habit of going straight to the chrome flags page and turning off all this junk exactly because disk usage of chrome is ridiculous otherwise.by bluehex
5/5/2026 at 10:00:08 AM
I did the same thing, but realized I was contributing to the problem. If a web app requires Chrome for full functionality, then us switching browsers is giving them permission to continue and expand their invasive practices.These days, I just navigate away from anything that demands I use Chrome "for best results." One of the sites for a local utility company does this, so instead I just call monthly and pay or manage my service by phone. I'm old enough to remember when that was the preferred way after mailing personal cheques went the way of the dodo, so it does not feel that inconvenient to me, but I can see where it might for other people. Still, nobody said the fight to regaining our agency online would be easy. Or convenient.
by 0xEF
5/5/2026 at 9:54:21 AM
What's another 4gb of disk space when computer hardware prices are soaring into unobtanium?I hate how much companies don't care about efficiency or their customers. It's like windows 11 requiring like 2 more GB of RAM just to see your desktop, what an upgrade, yuck.
by 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 10:02:00 AM
Like what?I think the only time I've ever had to use Chrome instead of Firefox was because of some USB device thing that worked inside Chrome. Otherwise everything just works in Firefox.
by Hamuko
5/5/2026 at 10:07:43 AM
The sites my colleagues and I produce. They consider Chrome === Standard and everything else a deviation for which they may begrudgingly fix obvious bugs in once pressed. It's seldom that entire sites will break in other browsers, but instead they simply do not work in some ways like modals sometimes breaking, or XHR requests failing, or performance being bad.It's frustrating.
by Y-bar
5/5/2026 at 2:32:55 PM
Most recently it was the configuration app for my keyboard firmware, and then video calling in FB messenger (that one might work in other browsers besides Chrome. I didn't dig too much).by bluehex
5/5/2026 at 9:51:13 AM
Yea. Anyone still using chrome at this point must really love getting emails about class action lawsuits from Google. My god.by 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 8:41:29 AM
I am using Firefox for years now. It's such a splendid experience.I can recommend the following extensions:
- Youtube Enhancer
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
- Cookie Auto Decline (a MUST for Europeans)
- Slop Evader
- No Gender (a MUST for Germans)
Its a totally different browsing experience than what most people have.
I recently watched my kiddo looking something up with Edge on her laptop. I had to interfere and install Firefox. It was ridicolous!!! The amount of spam on the screen. How people can cope with this is beyond me. Especially if the solution doesn't cost anything. Just Firefox + some free extensions.
edit: because people asked about the No Gender extension:
Germany didn't have “gendered” language, until it was introduced some years ago.
Imagine the sentence: The teachers explain to their pupiles that the managers work only for the shareholders.
in regular German, it would translate to:
Die Lehrer erklärten den Schülern, dass die Manager ausschliesslich für die Anteilhaber arbeiten.
In gendered German, it became:
Die Lehrer:innen erklärten den Schüler:innen, dass die Manager:innen ausschliesslich für die Anteilhaber:innen arbeiten.
For me, it ruins the reading experience.
by lmf4lol
5/5/2026 at 8:49:44 AM
For me the most important extension is uBlock Origin. It's worth switching to Firefox for this alone.by MaKey
5/5/2026 at 8:58:23 AM
Without your ublock origin browsing the net is quite horrible these daysby onemoresoop
5/5/2026 at 9:35:19 AM
Youtube is virtually unwatchable without it. I honestly have no idea how most people cope. Truth is, even with an adblocker there's so much rubbish on the page that gets in my way. Invidous is much better but it's too unreliable.Sites that autoplay a video, which follows you as you scroll are the worst.
by FridayoLeary
5/5/2026 at 9:59:23 AM
I like the Unhooked extension. You can select which parts of YouTube you want to remove (e. g. Shorts). My start page is empty, I need to visit the channel pages to watch their videos.by MaKey
5/5/2026 at 9:37:57 AM
Or for real control, uMatrix (yes there are madmen like me still stubbornly hanging on)by freedomben
5/5/2026 at 10:24:22 AM
that + NoScript. That latter is a must for me.by yubblegum
5/5/2026 at 8:49:58 AM
Firefox added split view where you can look at two (or more) webpages side by side. This is a lifesaver when you have to fill up a form looking up stuff from another page!by qsera
5/5/2026 at 8:53:54 AM
Isn’t this kind of the job of the OS windowing system? It’s maybe slightly nicer to share the window chrome for two tabs but it’s not like looking at two browser tabs in parallel was impossible before.by echoangle
5/5/2026 at 9:00:28 AM
Yes, and both Windows and MacOS have features to put things side by side... but they're not very intuitive and may require multiple inputs to achieve what the browser(s) do with one or two presses. On MacOS you have to long-press the "maximize" button, for example. I forgot that was a thing before reading this actually, but then I use the third-party tool Rectangle for window management.by Cthulhu_
5/5/2026 at 9:46:46 AM
Sure, but this is a lot nicer because when they are separate windows, and you have more windows, and if you have to alt-tab to check something else, it is a bit flow-breaking to bring these exact two windows back on top.by qsera
5/5/2026 at 10:39:34 AM
Yes, but they are grouped under one single tab, so for me at least is more easy to alt-tab to other app and return to the split view.by yazantapuz
5/5/2026 at 8:55:22 AM
Chrome does this split-screen. Web browsers are operating systems, for all intents & purposes.Ask any Emacs evangelist.
by ButlerianJihad
5/5/2026 at 9:58:32 AM
I love my emacs brothers and sisters but yea. If you are running docker emacs and a web browser you basically have 4 OSs running at the same timeby 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 8:49:42 AM
Can you explain what the "No Gender" extension is about and why it is a must?by tomtomtom777
5/5/2026 at 8:56:11 AM
It removes gender speech (Leser*innen becomes Leser), which can be awkward and hurt the reading flow.by MaKey
5/5/2026 at 9:41:29 AM
It seems like you would lose meaning by automatically replacing words, no? Why would you want to censor your internet experience, just because you find someone else's use of language awkward?by mmyrte
5/5/2026 at 9:55:21 AM
It's still the same word, just as generic masculine. Gender speech isn't part of the German language but an add-on with no standardization (that's why there are multiple different approaches). Apart from looking awkward one of the main criticisms is that it hurts the reading flow. Following that point the extension improves the reading experience.by MaKey
5/5/2026 at 10:09:01 AM
To prevent accusations of "masculinism" or sexism and to have a stronger case on having the goal to improve readability the add-on could include an option (or even make it default) to replace by generic feminine instead.by mofeien
5/5/2026 at 10:15:25 AM
The times where you have to try to appease small but vocal perpetually outraged groups are over. The German language has no generic feminine so adding it to the extension would contradict its goal.by MaKey
5/5/2026 at 10:43:53 AM
> The times where you have to try to appease small but vocal perpetually outraged groups are over.Zwei Punkte: erstens, nein, such times are never over. Only thing that changes is who is outraged and by what.
Zweitens, you're a demonstration of this right now by caring. To be clear, I'm not criticising you for this, you're allowed to care about stuff, but you're literally promoting an extension that rewrites someone else's word choice because you don't like it. Es ist dasselbe, und ist gründlich no different to how English Sprachbewahrer complain about the split infinitive in Star Trek's "to boldly go" or common use of the phrase "very unique" (unique means one-of-a-kind, how can you be "very" that?)
> The German language has no generic feminine so adding it to the extension would contradict its goal.
Die deutsche Sprache ist keine constructed language like Esperanto, whose rules come from a book, it's a natural language whose rules are discovered by observing those using it. As people change what they say and how they say it, so too does language change over time.
The German language is what those using it, do. On the basis of the political adverts I see around here, this includes the conservative CDU borrowing die englische Phrase „Made in Germany“: https://www.cdu.de/aktuelles/cdu-deutschlands/mainzer-erklae...
by ben_w
5/5/2026 at 10:24:31 AM
The goal as stated on the extension page is to improve the readability of texts by replacing :, *, _ forms. So some customizability to the user's wishes would be quite nice.My calculus textbook (Königsberger, 2004) in university used alternating generic masculine and feminine in its exercises, which I found a delightful use of language.
by mofeien
5/5/2026 at 9:47:07 AM
Germany didn't have “gendered” language, until it was introduced some years ago. It’s a terrible reading experience and super annoying.Imagine the sentence: The teachers explain to their pupiles that the managers work only for the shareholders.
it was
Die Lehrer erklärten den Schülern, dass die Manager ausschliesslich für die Anteilhaber arbeiten.
and it became:
Die Lehrer:innen erklärten den Schüler:innen, dass die Manager:innen ausschliesslich für die Anteilhaber:innen arbeiten.
It’s insane.
by lmf4lol
5/5/2026 at 10:08:38 AM
Forgive my ignorance, but it seems that there is more information in the "explicitly inclusive" form than the "implicitly inclusive" one. Doesn't the existence of the inclusive form allow you to explicitly use a non-inclusive form? So in this caseLehrer being explicitly male and Lehrer:innen being explicitly inclusive?
I appreciate that this seems to be an emotional topic, but if people choose to use language in a new way, would it not be best to not withhold that information from you as a reader? Someone else wrote that it's like using an ad-blocker, but if I were to read an article, I would want to read it in the exact form someone wrote it, no? It's a bit like Americans auto-replacing "fucking" with "f***g" in their browsers to avoid an annoyance, but they lose information in the process.
by mmyrte
5/5/2026 at 10:30:08 AM
As a German, you don’t really loose any information. it was introduced somewhere in the 2020s and is not (yet) standardized - and probably wont be.We Germans know that the generic masculine includes both genders by default. It’s how we use the language.
by lmf4lol
5/5/2026 at 9:59:39 AM
When was it introduced and why? It seems in the opposite direction of travel from many languages, which have been trying to make more gender neutral options available.(exception: Chinese didn't really bother with gendered pronouns until about the nineteenth century, due to the need to translate European languages, so some had to be introduced)
by pjc50
5/5/2026 at 10:33:49 AM
German feminist are looking for a long time to eliminate the generic masculine form. But unlike English, which allows you to use they/them to refer to both genders - and which i kind of like - German doesnt have such an option.So since my youth, multiple proposal have been put forward, among which the gender-star. Lehrer -> Lehrer*innen, Lehrer:innen.
It was never taken seriously, until we got a left wing government (2022 or so) and since then its getting more and more used. Especially in progressive media. Some even speak it. With a short break that represents the star or :. Sounds pretty stupid, but people do it.
In my mind, its the ultimate form of virtue signalling :-)
but hey. to each their own. I just prefer to ignore it if possible
by lmf4lol
5/5/2026 at 10:57:00 AM
It was definitely introduced before that point, I saw people complaining about it back in 2018 when I arrived in the country.by ben_w
5/5/2026 at 9:54:08 AM
People use the extension for the same reason people use other content blockers against advertisement, notices banners, social media widgets and so on, namely not to suffer avoidable annoyances.> you would lose meaning
No meaning is lost that has not been there before.
> someone else's use of language awkward
Most would judge that it's not just awkward, but grating.
by bmn__
5/5/2026 at 2:57:16 PM
Doesn't really seem like a MUST then...by Parae
5/5/2026 at 9:51:07 AM
I edited my comment to include an answer to your question.by lmf4lol
5/5/2026 at 9:00:59 AM
I'd like to know too. I struggled to understand the description of the extension - is it an anti-woke thing, or some sort of modern approach to German removing the traditional (i.e. non-political) genderisation of some words, or both, or something else?by mft_
5/5/2026 at 9:10:03 AM
Example: ReaderIn German: Leser (masculine)
Possible forms of inclusive speech: Leser*innen, Leser:in, Leser_innen
This extension removes these possible forms of inclusive speech. Arguably they hurt the reading flow and the German language has the generic masculine. However, proponents of inclusive speech feel that the generic masculine isn't inclusive.
by MaKey
5/5/2026 at 9:11:03 AM
A bit of both? Imagine every time you read the word "actor", it is instead spelled something like "actor:ress", or "actor_ress", or "actor*ress" (because the separator hasn't been standardised).Personally I'm in favour of it, but I will concede that if it's done enough times throughout the text (as German has way more gendered nouns in common use than English) it does come with the downside of breaking the reading flow.
by input_sh
5/5/2026 at 9:12:13 AM
The first. In German, many words that refer to a person (e.g. Fahrer/Fahrerin, male/female driver) have a plural which is identical to the male singular. For a while now, many writers have used a typographic style to make the plural gender-neutral by writing the male plural, an asterisk, and then the female plural suffix (e.g. Fahrer*innen).by plucas
5/5/2026 at 10:27:48 AM
Thanks - that's really interesting, in a weird-interesting way.I'm far from an expert in such things, but I'd observed that the approach in English to gendered words (actor vs. actress) seemed to be, over time, to drift towards calling everyone an actor - as a neutral term, to avoid treating women differently, rather than a male term per se.
In German, from your explanation, it's gone the opposite way - aggressively maintaining the female option because of a dislike of broad adoption of the male version as a neutral default.
by mft_
5/5/2026 at 12:14:51 PM
It's not "aggressively maintaining the female option", it's just a language quirk. English has a gender-neutral "the" article which you put in front of every noun, German has three different variations of "the" depending on the gender (der/die/das). Literally every noun has a gender, including inanimate objects such as a piece of furniture. "The table" is always masculine ("der Tisch"), "the lamp" is always feminine ("die Lampe") and "the bed" is always neutral ("das Bett"). Sometimes changing the article completely changes the meaning of the word, for example "der See" is the lake, but "die See" can be the sea or the ocean.Only living things can have more than one gender and in that case, not only does the article change, but so does the suffix. There is no "singress" in English, only "singer", but in German there's "der Sänger" or "die Sängerin". Calling a female singer "der Sänger" would be grammatically-speaking completely incorrect.
The only thing that changed fairly recently is that more and more people intentionally try to maintain gender ambiguity when they don't intent to specify a gender, in which case "the singer" becomes "die Sänger:in", or even "der:die Sänger:in" if you want to be even more pedantic.
by input_sh
5/5/2026 at 1:22:15 PM
Thanks; maybe I didn't explain my point well enough, but I know/understand everything you just wrote.> The only thing that changed fairly recently is that more and more people intentionally try to maintain gender ambiguity when they don't intent to specify a gender, in which case "the singer" becomes "die Sänger:in", or even "der:die Sänger:in" if you want to be even more pedantic.
Here is my point: in English, the move to gender neutrality of certain words (e.g. actor/actress) seems to have involved adopting the male version, and using it as neutral. (I don't know if some people are offended by this, but if they are, I've not come across it).
In contrast, in German, I impute that some people would be offended by using the male version of a word as a default neutral for all including women, so are deliberately maintaining the female version within the slightly awkward "Sänger:in" construct.
This is a strong, deliberate choice, in contrast to (what I see as) the more passive "eh, let's just use 'actor'" in English.
by mft_
5/5/2026 at 1:29:41 PM
English already has done this: fireman->firefighter, policeman->officer, mankind->humankind, man->humanity, etc.by duskdozer
5/5/2026 at 8:56:22 AM
[dead]by philipwhiuk
5/5/2026 at 8:51:30 AM
Extensions are a vector for vulnerabilities and malware though. Its happened many times already.by ekianjo
5/5/2026 at 8:53:58 AM
Computers are a vector for vulnerabilities and malware. We must all stop using them.by bakugo
5/7/2026 at 3:51:33 AM
Nice strawman!by ekianjo
5/5/2026 at 9:39:28 AM
- Ublock origin - decentraleyesby _blk
5/5/2026 at 9:27:42 AM
Switched over to Waterfox recently, nice alternative with some added extras for privacy etc.by shaunpud
5/5/2026 at 9:51:54 AM
Isn't waterfox owned by an ad company? Might as well be the Google of the fire fox browsers.by 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 10:50:45 AM
Noby shaunpud
5/5/2026 at 8:45:21 AM
The browser with a sidebar AI chatbot? What a simple solution.by echelon_musk
5/5/2026 at 9:33:12 AM
You don't have to have the sidebar chatbot thing. When mozilla added these AI features, after the update the browser prompted me to whether I want it or not, with the "yes" and "no" being equally easy to select. It did not add them without consent. You can disable all AI features altogether, or you can completely remove chatbot sidebar specifically (with 2 clicks) and have the rest of the features if you want them.Gosh most of the time when I read people complain about firefox, it gives me the impression they have not even used firefox.
by freehorse
5/5/2026 at 9:36:25 AM
That's neat. Firefox has never prompted me on any of my instances and the sidebar is still present. Wish they would ask everyone for consent.by willis936
5/6/2026 at 3:49:04 PM
Firefox does not even have a default provider. It is not like the chatbot panel itself can even exist without a user actively choosing a provider and potentially having to log in. The default is to have a selection menu, which then basically loads the interface of the llm provider themselves. So when they introduced it I remember been prompted to select a provider or close it.Similarly with their separate summarisation etc features I was prompted whether I wanted a local model, online model (I think), or not at all. It did not download 4gb of data without consent.
We can keep complaining about details forever but it is like missing the forest completely.
by freehorse
5/5/2026 at 9:41:34 AM
If you accidentally skipped it, go to Preferences -> AI Controls -> toggle on Block AI Enhancements, it disables everything.by utrack
5/5/2026 at 9:52:53 AM
He’s not saying he accidentally skipped the prompt, he’s saying he didn’t get any.by kaiwn
5/5/2026 at 12:03:02 PM
I would prefer a browser without any ai slop.by blks
5/5/2026 at 9:37:31 AM
This is article about Chrome doing something undesirable with AI. Which can be easily disabled by going into chrome://flags. And suggestion is to download Firefox which is also doing something undesirable with AI. Which is also can be easily disabled. Seems both browsers are quite similar in this regard, so suggestion to replace one with another is not very helpful?by PinkaDunka
5/6/2026 at 3:51:36 PM
"Undesirable" means without consent (as per the title also). You can disable the flag (not that trivial in the first place to find it etc), but that can only be after you know of it, and after you get to know of the flag, which is probably after it already has downloaded the models. FF asks before if you want to download them or not.by freehorse
5/5/2026 at 10:44:44 AM
ff doesn't download models unless you so opt in.by j-bos
5/5/2026 at 9:55:11 AM
Firefox lets you disable all AI features with 1 setting switch.by 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 9:57:33 AM
LibreWolf.by grebc
5/5/2026 at 8:40:43 AM
[flagged]by imcritic
5/5/2026 at 10:18:40 AM
We've banned this account.by tomhow
5/5/2026 at 11:27:40 AM
Hi Tom, since you are here. It seems that my comment, the GOP is flagged and I think this is a case of flag abuse. Can you help with that?by elashri
5/5/2026 at 7:18:33 PM
That was an unsubstantive comment, that started a generic tangent, and veers onto the wrong side of these parts of the guidelines:Don't be snarky. Converse curiously
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
I understand you probably didn't know that or may not accept the assessment, and that's fine, but please know that we consider it important that comments should be about the article's primary topic and that they activate curious conversation.
by tomhow
5/6/2026 at 12:09:37 AM
Thanks for explaining that, you are probably right.by elashri
5/6/2026 at 5:20:14 AM
Thanks for understanding. I know it can feel like a bummer when your comment was at the top of the thread, getting lots of upvotes and replies, only to see it suddenly buried lower down the thread.The main issue for us is just about relevance. The topic of the post is the 4GB model installed with Chrome. That's what the top comment and discussion needs to be about.
Of course, your comment, being about a competing browser, isn't completely irrelevant, it's just not the most relevant issue or the most important one to discuss in seeking to understand the primary topic. It's not an egregious breach of the guidelines – hence I said "veers onto the wrong side". I think you get it.
by tomhow
5/6/2026 at 9:39:09 AM
Ni problem. I get you point but just to clarify I didn't feel that. I did not actually realize this was the top comment.My point was that as this is another thing that chrome put down our throat without ability to stop it which actually what the original link refers to, then the solution as a reminder is to use Firefox.
I was just complaining because I suspected that many people might be abusing because they just don't like Firefox (some replies including the account you just banned indicated that to me) but I am probably wrong.
I am not arguing, just explaining my thoughts. And thanks for taking the time to explain and clarify.
by elashri
5/7/2026 at 12:42:43 AM
All good, thanks for the thoughts.by tomhow
5/5/2026 at 11:07:09 AM
[dead]by imcritic
5/5/2026 at 8:52:43 AM
[flagged]by phatfish
5/5/2026 at 10:15:22 AM
Don't need a VPN for that, a fake moustache is enough. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48018080by whynotmaybe
5/5/2026 at 10:10:59 AM
Take responsibility for your kids. Talk to them (or ask someone you trust to do it) about what is acceptable in your household and elsewhere.by Y-bar
5/5/2026 at 9:20:04 AM
That's really a bullshit argument. First off, there are plenty of technical solutions that allow minors (15-17 years old) to bypass the restrictions: using sites that don't follow the law, using Tor, etc. But furthermore, these measures to restrict access to porn are counterproductive for sex workers, because it makes their situation more precarious, and they only exist to weaponize the "think of the children" narrative in order to push draconian laws and social control. Soon it will be social media's turn, and then the entire internet asking for an ID. This isn't just an empty "slippery slope" argument, it's exactly what regulators are currently doing in all Western countries.by xzjis
5/5/2026 at 8:59:42 PM
Well, it's coming and childless neckbeards or sex workers can't stop it. Restrictions on social media and porn for children is one of the few things that crosses the political divide.You can bypass them to make your jerk-off extra satisfying if you like, i don't care. As long as the bar is high enough that kids in general are protected and a precedent is set in society.
by phatfish
5/5/2026 at 9:38:38 AM
Won't someone think of the kids! Not the parents, no, they should be increasing shareholder value. /sby lionkor
5/5/2026 at 9:55:09 AM
... and it takes up 50% CPU on 16 cores just to run a video call. Laptop battery drains in 30 minutes.Chrome doesn't do that. I literally can't use Firefox anywhere I don't have a power socket.
My laptop also becomes a toaster.
by qurren
5/5/2026 at 8:43:31 AM
Oh is this the browser by that company that are funded half a billion dollars a year by Google and want to become an advertising company[1] and wants their browser to become a modern AI browser[2]?[1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-o... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next...
by dwedge
5/5/2026 at 8:57:30 AM
Yes, that one! It's great, I can recommend it.by lionkor
5/5/2026 at 8:47:21 AM
Please feel free to suggest a better alternative.by ranger_danger
5/5/2026 at 8:50:16 AM
https://zen-browser.app/by nickvec
5/5/2026 at 8:59:45 AM
it's just arc-browser repackaged, isn't it?by Xmd5a
5/5/2026 at 9:09:11 AM
While it is certainly inspired by Arc, it doesn't share any code. Arc is proprietary and Chromium-based, Zen is Open Source and Firefox-based.by Cu3PO42
5/5/2026 at 9:21:09 AM
It is not. It is Firefox but with an Arc-like workflow.by figmert
5/5/2026 at 8:53:46 AM
Not being able to suggest an alternative for Chrome doesn't imply that Firefox is a good alternative.On GrapheneOS they recommend Vanadium - a more secure Chromium fork - and specifically recommend against Firefox, but that's on mobile.
by dwedge
5/5/2026 at 9:38:08 AM
> Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox/Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android.> The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.
Context is definitely interesting to have with your statement (From https://grapheneos.org/usage).
by Sayrus
5/5/2026 at 9:42:43 AM
Firefox _is_ a good alternative to chrome, though, by the arguments OP brought. What OP complained about are even worse in chrome.FF is largely funded by google money? Chrome _is_ google.
FF invests in AI features? Google invests even more in AI features and shoves them to you without consent (which ff asked me for after upgrades).
Maybe FF is not perfect or great or whatever by one's point of view, but it _is better_ than chrome, at least regarding these arguments.
by freehorse
5/5/2026 at 9:54:15 AM
That's fair and true. I guess my issue with Firefox is that Google is obviously Google, and you know what to expect from a company like that. Mozilla is pretending to be an underdog while at the same time they are Google by proxy - aiming to bring more telemetry, more advertising, more AI and doing it with Google's money which they take partly so that Google can say they aren't a monopoly.It's the sneaky ways that Firefox are Google that bother me. Above you said that they recently added a switch to disable AI - only after backlash (though I have to admit that the original blog post said there should be an option to disable it). I also dislike that they are focusing on AI and advertising instead of improving their browser, but that's their decision.
by dwedge
5/5/2026 at 9:46:01 AM
Graphene user here: Firefox is my standard browser because I like it but mostly because it runs ublock Origin (which again causes me to like it). Vanadium I use for social media sites so I'm not logged in to those on the primary browser.by _blk
5/5/2026 at 8:52:11 AM
https://ladybird.org/by QuantumNomad_
5/5/2026 at 8:54:50 AM
Where's the download link?by n4r9
5/5/2026 at 8:57:11 AM
git clone https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird.git cd ladybird ./Meta/ladybird.py runIf you can, run it, report issues and help them develop it.
by dwedge
5/5/2026 at 9:16:56 AM
Wonderful. My unpaid bills will be so happy waiting for that to complete.by cicko
5/5/2026 at 9:30:56 AM
If you're using a computer from any time in the past 20 years or so it's probably capable of multitasking so you can open another browser to pay your bills in the meantime.I'll give myself as an example, between writing that first comment and replying to you, I downloaded and built ladybird on MacOS - it took 25 minutes, most of which was me fixing build dependencies - and here I am replying to you from an alternative browser. Text navigation is a little weird and text boxes are weird, but so far it works.
Of course, if building in the background is more effort than you're willing/able to expend, then continue using Chrome or Firefox until others finish the alternative, and then decide if the time required to download, install and get used to a packaged browser is also going to be a hindrance to you paying your bills.
by dwedge
5/5/2026 at 12:46:00 PM
My laptop runs Windows.by n4r9
5/5/2026 at 3:39:59 PM
That’s ok, you can install Linux on it free of charge. Open source, baby!by QuantumNomad_
5/5/2026 at 8:57:33 AM
Helium has all the benefits of Chromium but none of the Google bloat or other crazy AI, Crypto, Gaming or whatever ideas other browsers ship.Just uBlock Origin pre-installed
by gempir
5/5/2026 at 6:43:01 PM
There is also ungoogled-chromium:by ranger_danger
5/5/2026 at 8:49:52 AM
FWIW I've recently moved from Firefox to Helium after 10+ years.Yes, I hate that it's also Chromium, but no, there aren't real alternatives.
by airstrike
5/5/2026 at 9:23:09 AM
There are Firefox forks that don't have any AI/advertising/etc. stuff in it.There's also WebKit-based FOSS browsers not based on Chromium nor Gecko. Upstream it's maintained by Apple but the open source webkit browsers should not have any questionable features by default.
by ranger_danger
5/5/2026 at 8:47:14 AM
We Should Improve Society Somewhatby petesergeant
5/5/2026 at 9:59:57 AM
Why is this downvoted lol. It's so reasonableby 2ndorderthought
5/5/2026 at 8:58:44 AM
... that recently added a setting which allows you to entirely disable any AI enhancements? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-ai-controls#w_b... I mean Mozilla / Firefox aren't perfect but it's a hell of a lot better than Chrome and this comment does feel a bit like the perfect being the enemy of the good.by frereubu
5/7/2026 at 9:55:21 AM
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5/5/2026 at 9:03:26 AM
[flagged]by raverbashing
5/5/2026 at 9:09:54 AM
You should have finished reading the article. Stop being lazy and binary-minded.by zekrioca
5/5/2026 at 12:32:54 PM
[flagged]by semiquaver
5/5/2026 at 12:56:27 PM
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.
by mat_epice
5/5/2026 at 12:15:21 PM
Besides the numbers being stupidly overblown, this post shows why Europe is in a unstoppable death spiral.by kshmir
5/5/2026 at 8:23:59 AM
> Google has not, to my knowledge, published any analysis of the welfare impact of this on the populations whose internet access is metered.This is satire, obviously.
by walletdrainer
5/5/2026 at 8:40:52 AM
Clearly, you've never lived in Germany or other places that still have data caps and slow and unreliable internet connections.Yes, 4GB of unintended traffic can absolutely wreck someone's finances.
by mschuster91
5/5/2026 at 8:42:25 AM
Or places with collateral damage due to failures of German ISPs and state... That is many other parts of Europe while roaming... 4GB is significant cut of the roaming data allocated...by Ekaros
5/5/2026 at 12:27:43 PM
Some time ago friends were pranking each other with 32GB favicon.ico files this was a thing and one of them was on mobile in Germany. Turns out it would keep downloading in the background even if leaving the page. Their account was locked and had a massive bill for roaming charges. That prank went horribly wrong.by Bender
5/5/2026 at 2:47:59 PM
I don't get the outrage. AAA games routinely take 100-200 GBs. I certainly prefer local inference to feeding google my private data over the network (assuming they actually don't do that anyway...)by baq
5/5/2026 at 2:59:10 PM
I download a game with intent, and they're stored on a larger drive than where my programs/user data is installed.by ChoGGi
5/5/2026 at 3:01:54 PM
A modest-sized security patch is routinely several gigabytes.Hell, a few hours of browsing Tiktok or Youtube will take more bandwidth.
This is fake engagement bait.
by jnwatson
5/5/2026 at 3:00:54 PM
I already pay for an LLM, and one that's much smarter than Gemini Nano. I didn't ask for this, I didn't make any choice for it to be installed, and I almost certainly won't ever use it.by bastawhiz
5/5/2026 at 10:07:16 PM
AI haters think their activism is going to make a difference what other people want.by postalrat
5/5/2026 at 8:27:23 AM
Anyone, voluntarily installing a spy browser like Google Chrome on their devices, deserves this and much more.by lobito25
5/5/2026 at 11:48:10 AM
Sometimes I marvel at how nice it would be to have such a narrow view of the world and other's perspectives and contexts. Life would be so much easier!by ainiriand
5/6/2026 at 12:36:19 AM
Ironically, your comment seems to perfectly reflect the viewpoint you're criticizing.by lobito25
5/6/2026 at 7:42:16 PM
In my humble opinion, the parent of my comment seems to paint a picture that is quite drastic. I see why many people would have Chrome installed and I do not think something like that should be impose on to anyone.by ainiriand
5/5/2026 at 10:34:59 AM
For many, it's also involuntarily installed (e.g. corporate, vendor etc).by a96
