Browser wars, an indicator of the late Nineteen Nineties tech world, are again with a vengeance—and OpenAI simply entered the race

On Tuesday, OpenAI additionally entered the fray with its new AI powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas. The new browser seems to be rather a lot like conventional ones akin to Google Chrome, however places ChatGPT on the middle of the searching expertise and weaves AI into the consumer expertise. OpenAI can also be providing a paid agent mode of Atlas that may conduct searches by itself for customers.

For almost twenty years, the essential searching expertise, other than just a few minor enhancements, remained largely unchanged. Users typed a url within the navigation bar, or typed a search question in that very same area—a characteristic that Opera first pioneered however which was quickly copied by Google—and the browser takes the consumer to that net handle or a search outcomes web page, which shows a listing of hyperlinks. Click on a hyperlink and the browser takes you to that net web page.

Now, tech corporations are betting that customers desire a new form of expertise: a browser that may reply questions, not simply present a listing of hyperlinks, and that may do excess of simply navigate a consumer to an online web page—one that may carry out duties for the consumer on that web page, akin to reserving journey or finishing a purchase order.

“This is probably the biggest shift since we’ve seen the browser itself become the gateway to the internet. For 30 years, the browser was about navigation. Type, click, explore. Now, with AI, it’s changing the model completely. It’s moving from browsing to delegating,” George Chalhoub, assistant professor at UCL Interaction Centre, instructed Fortune.

Tech corporations, together with Perplexity and Opera, have already launched agentic AI browsers that may carry out duties on behalf of customers. Perplexity’s Comet combines an online browser with a built-in AI agent that may learn pages, summarize data, and even carry out multi-step actions, akin to reserving appointments or sending emails. Similarly, Opera’s Neon introduces options like “Do,” which might perform actions on a consumer’s behalf, and “Cards,” which retailer customized workflows and prompts for repeated use.

“The browser wars are starting and the competition is heating up because browsers today are the operating system of your applications,” Krystian Kolondra, EVP Browsers at Opera, instructed Fortune. “The browser world is extremely important because it is more aware than the operating system itself about what’s happening on your pages.”

The imaginative and prescient for AI-powered searching reframes the standard browser as not only a software for entry, however as the first interface by way of which AI brokers function.

“The whole notion of search changed. It’s not to point to the place where you can find your answer or do your thing, but to give you that answer and do that thing,” Himanshu Tyagi, co-founder of the open-source AI firm Sentient, stated. “We are moving to sort of a dark internet, in the sense that it’s not meant for just humans. It’s meant for bots to consume and process information. Bots do things and give humans the final thing.”

If the third spherical of browser wars is already underway, the battlefield seems to be very totally different from the times when the primary axes of competitors had been issues like velocity and tab administration. This time, it’s about which firm can ship probably the most seamless AI-powered expertise whereas navigating heightened privateness points and convincing customers to alter long-established habits. While main gamers like Google nonetheless dominate, nimble newcomers are testing the bounds of what a browser can do.

The third browser wars

The second spherical of browser wars concluded with Google Chrome’s dominance, principally as a result of its velocity and integration with the broader Google ecosystem. Most browsers are actually additionally underpinned by Chromium, a free and open-source net browser mission, which was primarily developed and maintained by Google. Chromium is actually a back-end system that determines how a browser goes out to discover a explicit net handle, utilizing an index of net pages Google maintains, and the way it renders that net web page.

While Google nonetheless dominates the search market and has taken steps to combine AI into the search expertise, its market share has been slipping. According to analysts at Third Bridge, in July, Google’s international search market share dropped under 90% for the primary time in 10 years.

This could possibly be as a result of elevated reputation of AI search engines like google like Perplexity or competitors from AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which launched its personal Search software in October final 12 months and introduced a full browser on Tuesday. In a survey from brokerage agency Evercore ISI conducted last year, ChatGPT respondents saying ChatGPT was their prime search supplier elevated to five% from 1% 4 months prior.

That stated, the recognition of Chome as a browser has not noticeably declined. While individuals could also be sending their search queries to ChatGPT or Perplexity, after they use these providers on desktop, they’re principally nonetheless utilizing a tab in Chrome to take action.

And given the technical complexity and value of constructing a browser from scratch, most AI corporations are unlikely to develop their very own back-end net indexing. Nearly each “AI browser” in the marketplace immediately, together with Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s Atlas, is constructed on Chromium.

Building a browser solely from scratch is advanced and resource-heavy. To accomplish that, an organization must recreate every little thing from how net pages are rendered and reminiscence is managed, to encryption methods, sandboxing, video playback, and fixed safety patching. Even Microsoft, as soon as Google’s fiercest rival within the browser area, ultimately deserted its personal engine and rebuilt Edge on Chromium.

“It’s literally reinventing the wheel,” Chalhoub stated. “I don’t see any company building its browser from scratch.”

A unified interface

But why are AI corporations so eager to have a browser of their very own? Perplexity, for instance, raised eyebrows earlier this 12 months when it made an unsolicited money supply of $34.5 billion for Google Chrome.

“The browser is what we live in during the day on our desktop devices,” Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer of Perplexity, instructed Fortune earlier this 12 months. “It’s just an incredibly powerful canvas, and in terms of being able to create value for users, it gives us a much bigger surface area… it requires us to know more about you and have more context.”

The actual prize for these corporations isn’t net navigation; it’s management of the gateway to the remainder of customers’ digital lives, together with lots of different web-based software program purposes. Most corporations are betting that the true worth of AI can be unlocked when AI brokers have entry to a consumer’s whole ecosystem—emails, calendar, messages, and paperwork—and may carry out duties throughout them seamlessly.

“There’s this myth of the ‘everything app,’” Tyagi stated. “AI is only magical when it’s everywhere with you in a single, unified interface. If you have to use one app for your glasses, another on your phone, and another on your laptop, that’s not a complete experience. The magic is when there’s one interface that goes with you everywhere and is always engaging with your context.”

Most AI corporations are engaged on autonomous assistants with the goal of getting them transferring fluidly between a consumer’s numerous purposes. But they’re pursuing various approaches to perform this.

OpenAI seems to be making an attempt to place ChatGPT as a model of this common interface, not by way of a browser, however by integrating third-party apps instantly into the chatbot so customers can search, store, plan journey, and handle recordsdata with out ever leaving the dialog.

But altering consumer habits isn’t simple, and the thought of searching the online is deeply ingrained in customers.

“Changing user habits takes time, especially when it comes to something as fundamental as how we explore the web,” Chalhoub stated. “For most people, the browser is the oldest and most familiar tool we use online. In terms of physical experience, we trust it so much because it’s stable and predictable.”

However, Chalhoub famous that it’s typically small conveniences that drive main behavioral shifts. “If an AI browser can slowly start saving me time, booking travel automatically, or summarizing articles, I think people will adapt much faster than we expect.”

In some ways, AI-enabled browsers, akin to Comet, OpenAI’s Atlas, or Gemini in Chrome, are a hybrid, or half-way home, between the thought of chatbots because the common interface, the place a human consumer has no direct entry to the online in any respect, and the standard, human-driven net searching expertise. The benefit of an AI browser is that it lets each the human and AI mannequin entry the online in precisely the identical approach—even on the identical time, with the agent capable of work alongside an individual, or work on one course of in a single tab whereas the human consumer works on a special process in one other. With the online browser, there’s no have to create a completely new protocol by way of which the AI mannequin interacts with the content material and knowledge of third-parties, akin to Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), which is getting used to energy lots of “agentic” experiences in chatbots.

The privateness drawback

Agentic AI browsers have entry to far more consumer knowledge than conventional search engines like google, which brings a few host of privateness issues. By design, these instruments see much more of what customers do on-line, and may even infer why a consumer is appearing in sure methods.

“Browsers have always been powerful data collection tools, and when you add AI to the mix, that power multiplies,” Chalhoub stated. “An AI-powered browser doesn’t just observe your behavior; it can infer your intentions, habits, and even your mood. Every prompt or summary becomes a data point about you, so the information has to be handled responsibly and not used for advertising or profiling.”

Chalhoub additionally warned that with AI within the loop, it makes it a lot more durable for customers to know the place their knowledge goes. “It’s definitely a privacy risk, not because AI is inherently bad, but it has more context and intention in one place. So companies really have to be responsible in this regard,” he stated.

It’s already unclear how far a consumer’s conversations with AI chatbots are confidential. For instance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lately warned that customers presently haven’t any authorized safety over their ChatGPT conversations if subpoenaed. Letting an AI agent crawl by way of emails, texts, and different extremely delicate knowledge might threat exposing deeply private data if not dealt with fastidiously, elevating critical questions on how a lot management customers actually have over their very own knowledge.

Tech corporations, for his or her half, are conscious of the brand new dangers round privateness launched by AI brokers. Kolondra stated that Opera’s Neon solely processes knowledge when customers ask it to, like when summarizing a web page, and all requests are end-to-end encrypted. “We don’t use that data to train our models,” he added.