Does anyone else find the writing in the article to be overdramatic? Including a 4gb is a negligible amount of space for current hardware and Chrome is not known as the browser to run on resource constrained devices. To put 4gb in context, I currently have 2 *tabs* open that nearly take up 4gb. The fact Chrome also has a way to disable this makes it kind of a nothingburger in my opinion.
> The roughly 4 GB × N devices of disk-storage cost, sustained, on user hardware. SSDs have a per-GB embodied carbon cost of approximately 0.16 kg CO2e per GB of NAND manufactured [18]
The estimated environmental aspect of the download also seems like an overblown point, noted for sensationalism. There are always hand-wavy numbers involved and I had to look no further than the quote above to find evidence of this. The reference for [18], "The dirty secret of SSDs: embodied carbon", incorrectly links to "Toward Carbon-Aware Networking" and makes no mention of the environmental cost of SSDs. After looking up "The Dirty Secret of SSDs: Embodied Carbon" myself, I was able to see the same methodologies as I was expecting used [1].
> We conducted an analysis encompassing 94 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) reports, which collectively quantify the embodied cost of SSDs. Owing to the scarcity of direct and up-to-date LCA studies focused specifically on SSDs. We compiled a dataset comprising LCA reports pertaining to Server, Workstation, Desktop, Laptop, and Chromebook products, all of which feature SSDs
All these studies rely on metrics extrapolated from layered assumptions and end up being used by those who try to use them as objective numbers.
4gb isn't really a negligible amount, given the amount of desktops and laptops sold with just a 256gb ssd
Exactly. Nand is expensive. I upgraded what my laptop came with but after installing a few games, cloning repositories over the years, various projects I've done, and other regular use, it's perpetually full. 4GB is probably about half the space I have free at any given time
Which apparently means it'll never install btw, even if I were to run Chrome. Another comment said they check for 22GB free space
> Including a 4gb is a negligible amount of space for current hardware and Chrome is not known as the browser to run on resource constrained devices.
4gb definitely isn’t a negligible amount of space on most people’s devices.
The quite successful it would seem MacBook Neo has 256GB of storage in its base configuration.
A MacBook Air and a basic sub $1000 Dell laptop starts at 512GB.
> To put 4gb in context, I currently have 2 tabs open that nearly take up 4gb.
You are conflating disk and memory.
> The fact Chrome also has a way to disable this makes it kind of a nothingburger in my opinion.
There’s a reason they picked an opt-out model for this, and not an opt-in approach.
But I also see the point in it. We recently did a hackathon, and I considered relying on Gemma 4 for privacy considerations. The local model could interpret the user’s natural language request and derive less privacy revealing requests to form based on that.
But then, a web app that shows people a loading screen while it downloads a 4GB model probably wouldn’t be a best-selling UX.
> You are conflating disk and memory.
I never conflated anything. I said it's a neglible amount of space for current hardware, which I still believe.
If anything, the fact that I think the amount of space is acceptable for the amount of ram a modern laptop has exaggerates the point.
> There’s a reason they picked an opt-out model for this, and not an opt-in approach.
That's the approach they take for most of their features.
> But then, a web app that shows people a loading screen while it downloads a 4GB model probably wouldn’t be a best-selling UX.
Which seems to be the motivation of having these local models embedded in the browser's available resources: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api
> I never conflated anything. I said it's a neglible amount of space for current hardware, which I still believe.
>
> If anything, the fact that I think the amount of space is acceptable for the amount of ram a modern laptop has exaggerates the point.
How does the memory usage of your browser tabs relate to the amount of disk space taken up by the downloaded models?
> That's the approach they take for most of their features.
And there’s a reason for that. Same one the EU forced companies to make consent to marketing and consumer data sharing opt-in and not opt-out: we have a bias.
> Which seems to be the motivation of having these local models embedded in the browser's available resources
Sooo… we are basically agreeing on the fact it could prove to be useful? In the long run, if and when they decide to pick a model that isn’t half brain dead (apparently it’s based on Gemma 3).
> How does the memory usage of your browser tabs relate to the amount of disk space taken up by the downloaded models?
I am talking about space in general. Data size. The relation of data stored in one place vs another is the fact they both store *data*. The components to store data can be cheaper or more expensive based on how it's architected. The fact I still see 4GB as an acceptable cost in ram exaggerates the point because it shows that I'm okay with 4GB being consumed in a relatively expensive component used for data storage (meaning I'd obviously be okay with it being stored on hard disk).
> if and when they decide to pick a model that isn’t half brain dead (apparently it’s based on Gemma 3)
Gemma 3 is far from brain dead and can be used for a variety of different tasks, translation being one I've personally used it for.