alt Hacker NewsFraming this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Java installed an ask.com toolbar without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it.
wellackshually the bloatware explicitly asked for consent. There was a checkbox at the end of the EULA asking you "I also don't agree to not install the ask.com toolbar. You wouldn't do that, would you?". There is a state of that checkbox which would not install the toolbar, because, as you know, it's not part of the software I'm trying to install. That state, however, is left as an exercise for the decompiler. :)
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.