By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
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Apart from everyone else pointing out this is a search engine problem not a browser problem, in general I wouldn't want my browser to carte-blance remove or filter (or in any way "interpret" my chosen web content. Its different when a plugin does this, because adding the plugin to your browser is an opt-in affair; and ux wise, when a plugin filters or alters content there's a way to notice or find out what it is doing (some kind of "splat").
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In addition, say Vivaldi had a "Filter Gemni Google 'Ai Overview'" feature. a) would Vivaldi be smart enough to filter it on a possibly proxied google search and NOT say in an article about Google Ai Overview somewhere else? b) everytime the Google search page front end changes (which I bet is seven times/day) your browser has to update and Vivaldi already pushes numerous changes/week, just saying (keep doing it tho.)
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@cynical13 I was just making sure you were aware of your options there.
I agree with your sentiment.
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi Thank you for keeping it "simple".
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@EricCarroll @Vivaldi We have no way of objectively knowing.
Vivaldi repackages the free open-source Chromium project with their own proprietary blend of herbs and spices and doesn't let anyone see the exact changes they're making.
Their repackage of Chromium might be opaque, but at least they're upfront about their funding model: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi At least firefox is up-front about and gives you the option to outright disable it all at will.
The only one thing I keep enabled, is the website translation - that's it (doesn't rely on google). -
@lazza @Vivaldi Yes I do. And that does not help. Vivaldi or any respectable party should have absolutely no part in shipping/enabling this stuff.
If you want to install it, it should be a third-party extension provided by the slop provider, and subject to the same access controls all extensions are subject to.
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