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 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.