Google has pulled its listening software from the open-source Chromium browser after complaints from developers and privacy campaigners.
The tool, which uses the computer’s microphone to listen out for the “OK, Google” hotword to trigger voice searches, was silently downloaded with updates of Chromium by default.
Open-source advocates complained that Google was downloading a “black box” on to their machines that was not open source and therefore could not be verified to be doing what it said it was meant to do.
Google has now made it an optional download that will not be installed unless a user adds it from the Chrome Web Store and opts into the voice-search functionality, which can be activated on Google’s search pages.
“As of the newly landed r335874 Chromium builds, by default, will not download this module at all,” said Google via its product pages. “Chromium is open source and it’s important to us, as is it is to you, that it doesn’t ship with closed-source components, lazily or not.”
Chromium is the open-source base for Google’s Chrome browser. Chrome claimed a 49.2% share of the global browser market in May, leading Microsoft’s Internet Explorer at 18.3% and Firefox at 16.4%, according to data from StatCounter.
The always-listening feature is installed by default within Chrome, but is not automatically enabled. Some users of the Chromium browser claimed that the always-listening program was activated and started listening without asking for permission.
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