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El Reg reports
New Chromium builds will no longer download/install the Hotword Shared Module and will automatically remove the module on startup if it was previously installed.
A closed-source and binary-only kernel module caused a fair fuss when it was found inveigling its way into the very much open-source Chromium.
Thanking the community for their attention and input on the issue, one of the project developers told the issues ticket thread that "as of the newly-landed r335874, Chromium builds, by default, will not download this module at all."
[...] An additional developer update regarding Hotword explains that "Builds of Google Chrome will still download this module by default. It will not be activated unless the user explicitly flips a preference to do so."
Related: Google Drops Binary Code into Chromium for Linux
Original Source
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Sunday June 28 2015, @02:45AM
It was an attempt to add "OK Google" support to any machine that has a microphone.
Contrary to popular paranoia, the binary does not constantly listen and send all sounds to Google, but it does listen (locally) for those words. If it hears them, It then collects the next sentence and sends it to google for analysis. This is exactly how the Google Voice Search in Android.
At least that is what Google said.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @01:59PM
At least that is what Google said.
Why are you putting on a condom sweetie? Of course I don't have herpes!