Fury Erupts After Google Chrome Sneakily Installs 4 GB AI Model On Users' PCs
Fury Erupts After Google Chrome Sneakily Installs 4 GB AI Model On Users’ PCs
Google's web browser has been "silently" installing an AI model on users' devices without asking for consent.Victor Tangermann (Futurism)
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TheFeatureCreature
in reply to Philara • • •like this
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Steve
in reply to TheFeatureCreature • • •I know someone who insists they realy like Edge.
Voytrekk
in reply to Steve • • •like this
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ليتني كوري شمالي
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to ليتني كوري شمالي • • •unwarlikeExtortion
in reply to ليتني كوري شمالي • • •Yeah.
Edge still has its problems, but it's nowhere near the hot mess it wass in 2015 when it was basically a reskinned IE. Once they switched to Chromium it was still a hot mess, butit did get polished and has all the features you'd expect of a modern browser.
That being said, Edge is the main innovator behind built-in AI chats and similar bloat, which Chrome also likes to shove down people's throats.
And although the feature has existed as a Firefox addon for ages, I think the first browser to support tab groups and horizontal tabs was Edge.
So since both are pretty on-par feature (and bloat) wise, run the same engine and are made and maintained by billion-dollar corpos gobbling user data, both seem like two sides of the same coin.
So for 'normies', it pretty much boils down to which ecosystem you're more ingrained - that will make you prefer Edge or Chrome.
Us lunatics on Linux and/or ActivityPub prefer an independent option.
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ليتني كوري شمالي
in reply to unwarlikeExtortion • • •AfricanExpansionist
in reply to unwarlikeExtortion • • •Hiro8811
in reply to Steve • • •Steve
in reply to Hiro8811 • • •I promise you she was
Malyca
in reply to Steve • • •AfricanExpansionist
in reply to Malyca • • •Malyca
in reply to AfricanExpansionist • • •eldavi
in reply to Malyca • • •biggerbogboy
in reply to Steve • • •To be fair, it’s really easy to switch to edge, you just use the browser you currently use, then after a bit you open edge and viola, all your data was transferred without your consent, including passwords, tabs, cache, everything.
(Source: happened to me 3 times)
Damage
in reply to biggerbogboy • • •FineCoatMummy
in reply to Steve • • •I dunno about most. Some, sure.
Browser market share 2009-2025
That green line is Chrome.
relative market adoption of web browsers
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)encelado748
in reply to TheFeatureCreature • • •recked_wralph
in reply to encelado748 • • •FineCoatMummy
in reply to recked_wralph • • •Yup I loves me some yt-dlp. But big tech is at war with it. They do everything possible to break it.
Sometimes it works only if you supply some token or credential. Which defeats the purpose. Other times it works monday but breaks tuesday.
Mad respect to ytdlp team for fighting this fight. But their enemy is formidable.
Damage
in reply to recked_wralph • • •recked_wralph
in reply to Damage • • •BladeFederation
in reply to encelado748 • • •encelado748
in reply to BladeFederation • • •Free_Appalachia
in reply to encelado748 • • •BladeFederation
in reply to encelado748 • • •encelado748
in reply to BladeFederation • • •V3 yes, obviously. V3 is what caused the reduction in API that prevented proper adblocking. V3 adblocker are less capable, cannot do dynamic blocking and delegate the blocking to the browser that can impose rules.
Brave work around this by directly injecting the adblocker in the browser, bypassing extensions API entirely. Other browsers do not do that. As of today I do not know of any browser maintaining a fork of v2. When Google killed it with v3 it was gone. Which browser are you talking about?
BladeFederation
in reply to encelado748 • • •encelado748
in reply to BladeFederation • • •FineCoatMummy
in reply to encelado748 • • •Agree. That's fallout from web becoming soooo complex. You have webasm. WebGl. JS compilation. WebRTC. Like a hundred other techs you need.
In the old days, a small team could make its own engine. There wasnt' so much to it. Now, only like 3 co's in the world can. And one of the 3 is propreitary for only their own hw.
There's Gemini ofc. But I doubt it will ever catch on outside like 0.001%.
internet protocol
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)humble_boatsman
in reply to Philara • • •like this
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FauxLiving
in reply to humble_boatsman • • •Clickbait headline.
"fury and "sneakily" are loaded terms. You can find a furious person on any topic on social media and "sneakily" is nonsense, they were trying to delete a file that Chrome requires and so Chrome fixes the install when it runs.
They even note that you can disable it in settings, though not without making it sound like an unusually hard thing to do: "manually digging through setting"
Clickbait headline, ragebait article. Anything for some advertising dollars.
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BananaTrifleViolin
in reply to FauxLiving • • •FauxLiving
in reply to BananaTrifleViolin • • •Just to be clear from the start, I don't use Chrome (or any Google products or services) and recommend everyone switch to Firefox/Firefox forks which are more privacy friendly.
I completely agree that it should be opt-in as well.
Google CONSTANTLY adds and removes default features from Chrome without any user notice (outside of patch notes) and many without the ability to opt out (Manifest v3, for example). Most people simply don't care to pay attention to the patch notes, which is understandable.
But, this specific AI thing isn't one of them.
Like you said, this is Google attempting to dominate the AI space my pushing it's own AI features and integrations.
This means a lot of self-promotion
They have a blog post:
blog.google/products-and-platf…
An an
... Show more...Just to be clear from the start, I don't use Chrome (or any Google products or services) and recommend everyone switch to Firefox/Firefox forks which are more privacy friendly.
I completely agree that it should be opt-in as well.
Google CONSTANTLY adds and removes default features from Chrome without any user notice (outside of patch notes) and many without the ability to opt out (Manifest v3, for example). Most people simply don't care to pay attention to the patch notes, which is understandable.
But, this specific AI thing isn't one of them.
Like you said, this is Google attempting to dominate the AI space my pushing it's own AI features and integrations.
This means a lot of self-promotion
They have a blog post:
blog.google/products-and-platf…
An announcement video:
Developer documentation:
developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/b…
A product page:
gemini.google/overview/gemini-…
(There's also YT advertisements and text ads, which I've seen on work PCs but I have them blocked at home so I have no links to examples)
The article, and many other articles sharing the same framing, are simply cashing in on outrage by ragebaiting the anti-AI crowd. Google has been loudly promoting their AI services and integration in all of their products. It is not at all surprising that Chrome is included in that and Google has made every attempt to tell every person on Earth that this is the case.
A new way to explore the web with AI Mode in Chrome
Robby Stein (Google)Batmorous
in reply to humble_boatsman • • •SubgeniUS [none/use any]
in reply to Philara • • •graynk
in reply to SubgeniUS [none/use any] • • •Free_Appalachia
in reply to Philara • • •eldavi
in reply to Free_Appalachia • • •Batmorous
in reply to eldavi • • •Its not that they do not care they just are not informed in way where they will find out about it, and then care. They need to feel the personal impact it will have on them or at least understand that.
Everyone reading this comment please let others know. We need another movement bringing proper awareness to this!!
eldavi
in reply to Batmorous • • •i've become convinced that this is the only way that will galvanize any change.
racoon
in reply to eldavi • • •Schlemmy
in reply to Philara • • •mavu
in reply to Philara • • •There must be tens of thousands of Furries erupting every day.
plz1
in reply to mavu • • •plz1
in reply to Philara • • •The least they could've done is install one of the abliterated models, so people can see how badly Gemini censors them...
For those that'll go search that later, you're welcome.
Cantaloupe
in reply to Philara • • •anar
in reply to Philara • • •Karl
in reply to anar • • •anar
in reply to Karl • • •I get you
You can still just stop using it and move to Firefox at least. However I understand you might have device restrictions for installing new programs if it's not your own device.
Voxel
in reply to Philara • • •TL;DR:
homik
in reply to Voxel • • •