Cross-Posted, via Technology Community.
Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users’ machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.
Certain websites are utter garbage if you don’t use chrome. I work from time to time with the American Bureau of Shipping and even with a user agent switcher, firefox outright doesn’t load. I already don’t like ABS but this makes them even more irritating to deal with.
This is all part of Google’s long winded plan of destroying open browsing standards.
For those sites, I just close them and move on and use another. I do that with any site that is total shit or loaded with garbage fly out menus and paywalls and the like. See ya.
If it’s a shop: idc, if they refuse to work with other browsers they clearly don’t want my money.
If it’s some form of authority: I have zero issues with escalating the problem by demanding they give me a paper version of whatever instead. I’m not living in the US, so I’m (still) able to pull this.
if you really need to use the site, chromium-based foss browsers like ungoogled chromium exist so you can avoid google chrome.