At least twice a year, I download a new browser, open it, and see if the web looks better through a different window. It never does, or at least it didn’t until recently.
We have entered a new era of AI-powered browsers. They have names like Comet, Dia, and Neon, and they all make the same promise: to do things for you on the web.
The web is broken, increasingly full of AI waste, and browsing it sucks. Maybe AI agents should search, click and think? Or at least, maybe they can speed things up. That could mean summarizing a news article, filling out a form, or making a purchase. ChatGPT Atlas, which OpenAI launched on Tuesday, works as a search engine of sorts, replacing the ubiquitous Google search bar at the top with a ChatGPT prompt box. Only Google Chrome offers Gemini as a companion that will follow you around the web and explain things to you, like Clippy but less annoying.
If you can get past the irony of AI agents swimming through an AI puddle, the sales pitch for this new version of web browsers is compelling. So far, as with AI in general, the promises do not quite match the reality of the software. I’ve tested the AI agent features in all of these new browsers and none can do things faster or better than I can with my eyes and fingertips.
However, I can see the vague outlines of a better website through these browser windows, one that’s more natural to use and less filled with pop-ups and junk. I can see something that looks a bit like Google Chrome when I first used it almost 20 years ago.
What it’s like to navigate with AI
The experience of using these AI-based browsers is quite similar, both with each other and with existing browsers. They also look a lot like Chrome on the outside, as most of them are built on the Chromium platform, the open source project founded by Google. What’s different, however, is the generative AI chatbot installed on the side.
You can ask the chatbot questions about what’s on the page at any time, including calendars and emails. They can compose a text for you or collect information, while learning about your interests. Generally, there are free versions of these browsers and other paid ones. Basic features, such as the ability to summarize a web page, are largely available for free. To get access to AI agent features and more memory, you’ll have to spend $20 a month to upgrade to professional accounts for ChatGPT Atlas or Perplexity, which are made by Comet. (Opera’s Neon is also $20 and is currently invite-only, and Dia doesn’t have agents yet.)
What’s really different is that Google takes a backseat to all AI-first browser experiences. For as long as I can remember, finding anything online started with a Google search that led to a list of blue links or, if you were lucky, to the information you were looking for in the form of a map, image, video or, more recently, an AI-generated answer. Sure, the message in the AI Browser looks like a Google Search page, but the results are better organized, presented in bullets or paragraphs, depending on your query. Meanwhile, Google’s search results page has long been plagued by ads, spam, and affiliate marketing links.
Regardless of whether you want an AI agent to book your next vacation, you have to admit that it’s easier to ask ChatGPT for cheap hotels near Maui’s best beaches (spoiler: there aren’t any) than to Google it. When you do it in an AI-based browser, like ChatGPT Atlas, you’re supposed to get personalized results, based on what the bot knows about you from your previous chats. In other words, you’ll get exactly what you’re looking for on the web faster.
Everything goes back to Chrome
If you remember the history of the Internet, this was the original premise of Google Chrome. The official blog post announcing the first Beta version of Chrome in 2008 presented the browser as “simplified and streamlined,” especially since you could perform a Google search directly from a large box at the top of the browser window. In an update three years later, Google also introduced the ability to sign in to Chrome so your personal data follows you wherever you go. Of course, all that personal data helped Google grow its online advertising business and serve you even more personalized ads. Over the years, that led to more bloated search results and a less optimized web browsing experience in Chrome.
Google has maintained its dominant global market share for both search and web browsers at around 90 and 70 percent, respectively. Still, I’d say you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who absolutely loves using Google Search these days. And by the way, I have to ask anyone who is still excited about Google Chrome, which helped cement Google’s position as the gateway to the Web. I actually went back to Safari years ago, when Chrome stopped feeling so fast and Google started getting hit with antitrust lawsuits.
The funny thing is that these AI-powered browsers remind me of Chrome in its early days. Back then, Google boasted of having created a browser from scratch, and in some ways, AI-based browsers represent a complete makeover. Chrome was fast because it redesigned the workflow that loaded web pages and kept tabs running. AI-based browsers are fast because they rethink how you interact with a browser. It is not necessary to include keywords in a Google search, although you can if you wish. You can explain what you need to a chatbot, which can then explain what you’re seeing on the web. The entire experience ends up being quite simple and agile.
I’ll be the first to admit that chatbots aren’t for everyone. It took me many hours of experimentation before I figured out how to make this new technology work for me, and now I discover new ways that tools like ChatGPT can be useful almost every day. I’ll also confess that I hope to remain a loyal Safari user, who uses Google Search for all sorts of things.
AI browsers don’t work exactly as advertised right now, but they offer the possibility of a better, cleaner, faster web. It’s also entirely possible that companies like OpenAI will suddenly realize, as Google once did, that they can make a lot of money by collecting massive amounts of data about their users and using it to sell ads across the web. There are signs that this is already happening.
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