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.
That “Google has to say it’s ok” type of thing used to be a total dealbreaker. So many things either required fragile workarounds or straight up didn’t work at all.
When I saw the posts about the new Jolla phone, I nearly bought one. Unfortunately, I still have some special hardware that requires android or iOS to work properly, and getting rid of them would feel like jumping back to 2010. That’s the primary reason I don’t think I could get rid of a mainstream mobile device.
However, I’m still tempted to get that phone and try it out as a secondary phone. That way, I would find out where the bottlenecks are these days.
That “Google has to say it’s ok” type of thing used to be a total dealbreaker. So many things either required fragile workarounds or straight up didn’t work at all.
When I saw the posts about the new Jolla phone, I nearly bought one. Unfortunately, I still have some special hardware that requires android or iOS to work properly, and getting rid of them would feel like jumping back to 2010. That’s the primary reason I don’t think I could get rid of a mainstream mobile device.
However, I’m still tempted to get that phone and try it out as a secondary phone. That way, I would find out where the bottlenecks are these days.