There is, however, precedent for software alerting/asking the user to install “extras” or utility packs and showing the disk size that content will take up and even allowing the user to choose a location to store such things. Creative software does this all the time.
There’s nothing stopping Google Chrome from doing something similar except, I suspect, Google knows or feels it will result in many fewer installs of its bloatware.
That's a good point. "Downloads a 4GB LLM model without notice" would get a good amount of attention and be an accurate representation of the situation. The article undermines itself by misrepresenting the problem.
Rage bait? It's a fact about how some software handles downloading extra content. This issue and how ads on the web are served are two separate issues.
There’s nothing stopping Google Chrome from doing something similar except, I suspect, Google knows or feels it will result in many fewer installs of its bloatware.