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
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday June 28 2015, @11:13AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @01:54PM
$> ./configure
$> make
$> sudo make install
there, that was easy... what part of sudo do you not get?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @04:19PM
This isn't a kernel module binary blob, it's a binary blob component that is part of, and used exclusively and internally by, the browser program. Not an OS issue at all, simply an issue of what is contained in the browser code.