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.
If you’re on windows, check the task scheduler. There are, by default, some update tasks that get installed when you first install chrome.
That happened some 20+ years ago. I’m on Linux by now, no way I’ll willingly put Win11 on my PC. But thanks, maybe it’s useful for someone else.
Either ways it’s not anything that ever should have happened.