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.
When does code become software?
Equating 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.
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.
That'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.
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.
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.
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.
Excuse me while I go count the hairs on my chin to see if they are >= MIN_BEARD_THRESHOLD.
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.
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'!"
yea your analogy doesn't even remotely make sense
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.
So, 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.
"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...
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.
11 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 your same logic. You should be using chromium at the very minimum.
... and not everyone is running the current equivalent. So, while 4gb may be immaterial _to you_, that is not the case for everyone.
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.
The browser would then have a configuration option of which JS interpreter to use.
Browsers could not make sensible use of a JS _binary_. Browsers are _deeply intertwined_ with their JS engines, requiring integration with a _library_. There is no such thing as hot-swappable JS engine libraries from different vendors.
Citation very much needed. Technologists are not laypeople, and are almost certainly a vocal minority.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'"
> 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?
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
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.
Just 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.
Because it's AI. Got it.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The '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.
I had no idea chrome had this feature. Wish Apple had something like this honestly. https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...
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)
Every paradigm shift offers the opportunity to relitigate old bargains.
Right and if slavery and virgin sacrifices happen for decades we should just join in
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Yes, that's the problem
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.
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.
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.
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.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
You mean like Siri? It does the exact same thing and no one asked for it, either. That shit barely works too.
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.
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.
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.
My guess is that maybe one in 1000 Chrome users will even notice it.
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.
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.
You 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?
You 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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...
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.
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
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.
I’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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Of course, it's not like any of this matters in the end.
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
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."
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A browser should render web pages not bring its own AI
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.
I have no pay scale to worry about, I own the software I build and don't rely on wages
Courts 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.
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.
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.
When 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.
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.
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.
The alternative is sending the data to Google.
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?
Knowing Google, the local model probably means even more data are sent to Google.
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
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.
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.
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.
I was trying to draw that parallel but maybe I'm misremembering
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.
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.
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.
This 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-...
It 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.
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
I asked Codex to look into it: https://i.imgur.com/lvOjR0x.png
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
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...
People installed an html client, not a backdoor into their computer.
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.
Installation is not consent.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
A browser is for browsing. Going to websites and using them, in the way we've been used to for decades.
To suddenly use it to install an AI model on your machine, is way beyond the expected scope. There's nothing "auto update" about this, nor is it required functionality.
If anything is dangerous, it's you framing this as if you get to control how the conversation is had.
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.