This. Go to chrome://flags and disable “Enable OCR For Local Image Search” and I bet the problem goes away.
It’s a stupid feature for Google to enable by default on systems that are generally very low spec and badly made, but it’s not some evil data slurp. One of the most obnoxious things about enshittification is the corrosive effect it seems to have had on technical users’ curiosity: instead of researching and fixing problems, people now seem very prone to jump to “the software is evil and bad” and give up at doing any kind of actual investigation.
It’s a stupid feature for Google to enable by default on systems that are generally very low spec and badly made, but it’s not some evil data slurp. One of the most obnoxious things about enshittification is the corrosive effect it seems to have had on technical users’ curiosity: instead of researching and fixing problems, people now seem very prone to jump to “the software is evil and bad” and give up at doing any kind of actual investigation.