Seems they just want your personal browsing history for training, and built this Chromium reskin to get around privacy controls.
> "OpenAI decided to build its own browser, rather than simply a "plug-in" on top of another company's browser, in order to have more control over the data it can collect, one source said."
I think native browser can provide better integration than browser extensions. Things like: mcp, access to accessibility, playwright, browser use, stagehand - this should help make a better operator.
Why do these idiot companies keep tackling real technical challenges that they don't want.
Open AI doesn't want to own and maintain a browser for the next 20 years! They'll give up in like two years when they realize it's actually quite hard and they have no particular committment to it
Like The Browser Company, that gave up on Arc to make Dia, an "AI browser" that's sure to have an equally short life.
I get that everyone wants to be a platform and to live where the user is all day, but getting folks to switch browsers is nearly impossible and, on Apple, fully impossible as only Safari-based browsers are permitted and those are highly restricted.
Not really if you are a Chromium fork. Difficult from ground-up but from Chromium it’s rather easy. Way easier than creating an LLM. Even easier when you can hire the Chromium developers.
You clearly think how they think. It's just so EASY to do. Practically done already. With an attitude like that how could they not succeed in tackling a really, really hard problem that requires nearly endless thankless investment?
If it were rocket science it would be less surprising to me that they would want to be spending their time on it.
It's clear that they envy Google's position of owning a web browser (that everyone uses). But a play like this that involves entering a highly competitive market with openly vicious level of scrutiny... Like, what would you say if Facebook announced that they were announcing that they would be starting their first hospital? That's a hypothetical, but IRL Amazon tried to convince people that they wanted to be operating a chain of hair salons. My point is that it was easy to tell from the outside that this was corporate whim and they weren't going to be very willing to put up with it for long if it turned out to be genuinely hard, because there just wasn't enough alignment with the mission.
So yeah, I've no trouble understanding why they want to own a browser in theory. And since they can print money and want to hoover up talent anyway, why not just hire some engs. It looks good for the company's future growth prospects if people do believe you're serious. But it just seems to me that thus far they've shown no real hard commitment, no philosophical alignment, and no appreciation for the reasons what they're doing is difficult: it's a social problem not just a hiring one
It's actually super easy. I modified Chromium's internal code myself to do what I wanted, I added some logic in C++ and then compiled it. It just works. They mainly want to gather more data and have access to more functionality, so the LLM agent isn't constrained by the plugin API etc. It's not really hard. They won't do any browser level stuff, instead they'll basically create their own plugin on top of Chromium with full access to everything, and that's it.
At first I thought this was funny, but truthfully I don't love my browser. Brave and Firefox are both mildly annoying in different ways.
I'll probably give it a spin when they release it. It's just a Chromium fork and they can afford to make it good, if the AI integration is subtle and actually useful and there are robust controls on how my data is used (and it supports high quality adblock), I could see myself using it regularly.
> The browser’s access to a user’s web activity would make it the ideal platform for AI “agents” that can take actions on their behalf, like booking reservations or filling out forms, directly within the websites they use.
How about agents canceling services I no longer want? Or agents figuring out what choices I have to make to get my return picked up rather than have to take it to a drop off or pay?
There was the open web, with lots of rich api's... All of that got killed for the sake of profit and market consolidation. Are those same players going to be tolerant of agents cutting into their bottom line, of agents that cant be upsold, that dont misclick?
IF we ever get a solid agenic tooling I suspect that it will be murdered in its crib by industry.
Almost certainly a Chromium fork rather than just a layer, similar to how Edge, Brave and Arc are built. This gives them full control over the rendering engine and browser internals while leveraging Chromium's compatibility.
This would make giving them all my data so much easier for them. That is the endgame, right? OpenAI becomes the advertiser of record using the best, richest, most targeted data ever. And we gave it all to them. “Dumb Fucks” -Zuck
We're on a Google and OpenAI collision timeline. Google has to win to stay relevant, while OpenAI has to win to survive.
Looking at my own usage patterns, Google's ad business should have be long gone now, but then again I've been running adblockers since forever so maybe I just don't understand the dynamics here. Google has to recapture the perceived (or actual) lead in the AI market before its made obsolete and OpenAI has to keep Google on the defense otherwise it will just be commoditized away (I think this is more about good old market share here and no one waits around for AGI to unlock a spectacular economic value, they want each other's money now).
This is the second step in just a month or so where OpenAI directly encroaches on Google territory (first was with the recruitment of Johnny Ive to sidestep established mobile platforms and now going straight for Google's jugular).
It would be really interesting once OpenAI gets into the ad business, because right now Google has its share of ad revenue on hard allocation, and once in-stream AI advertising opens up it would surely divert some of that money.
Why not just release this as an extension? And make it work with Firefox as well. This seems why browser extensions exist at all. No need to pretend that perplexity or openai is actually going to do any work at all on the rest of the browser. And it seems overkill to release your own browser just to white label it.
IIRC most web use is mobile. Approximately 0% of mobile users can install extensions.
Edit: I forgot iOS Safari can install extensions. Android users can install Firefox and then install extensions, but this is a big ask for the typical user.
Probably still a good estimate that <0.5% of mobile users have ever installed an extension.
I do it for Ublock Origin. The web without an adblocker sucks so much ass. I truly don't understand how regular users do it without killing themselves.
If that is a literally true, I'd be doubting her capability to informed consent to a relationship, but that's just me. It's literally a google search and one or two button clicks. It's about the same complexity as opening and scrolling Facebook.
> OpenAI decided to build its own browser, rather than simply a “plug-in” on top of another company’s browser, in order to have more control over the data it can collect, one source said.
It's pretty much impossible to create WebExtensions that provide a complete experience and feel native. The API is (perhaps rightfully so) quite restrictive.
Seems they just want your personal browsing history for training, and built this Chromium reskin to get around privacy controls.
> "OpenAI decided to build its own browser, rather than simply a "plug-in" on top of another company's browser, in order to have more control over the data it can collect, one source said."
I think native browser can provide better integration than browser extensions. Things like: mcp, access to accessibility, playwright, browser use, stagehand - this should help make a better operator.
Strange how in the end KDE Konqueror beat out Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. No one would have believed it.
The name was prescient. It conquered alright.
I was actually running Konqueror as my primary browser before Chrome was released. It was really great at the time, way faster than Firefox.
Especially when ignoring that Blink has very little of it left.
How many of your body's cells have been with you since birth?
Apples to oranges.
KHTML to Blink is species evolution.
Why do these idiot companies keep tackling real technical challenges that they don't want.
Open AI doesn't want to own and maintain a browser for the next 20 years! They'll give up in like two years when they realize it's actually quite hard and they have no particular committment to it
Like The Browser Company, that gave up on Arc to make Dia, an "AI browser" that's sure to have an equally short life.
I get that everyone wants to be a platform and to live where the user is all day, but getting folks to switch browsers is nearly impossible and, on Apple, fully impossible as only Safari-based browsers are permitted and those are highly restricted.
Not really if you are a Chromium fork. Difficult from ground-up but from Chromium it’s rather easy. Way easier than creating an LLM. Even easier when you can hire the Chromium developers.
You clearly think how they think. It's just so EASY to do. Practically done already. With an attitude like that how could they not succeed in tackling a really, really hard problem that requires nearly endless thankless investment?
He is talking common sense. Releasing a web browser on top of an existing one like Chromium is not rocket science.
I would urge you to reflect on your atitude. As the majority 'thinks how they think'. As we are right.
If it were rocket science it would be less surprising to me that they would want to be spending their time on it.
It's clear that they envy Google's position of owning a web browser (that everyone uses). But a play like this that involves entering a highly competitive market with openly vicious level of scrutiny... Like, what would you say if Facebook announced that they were announcing that they would be starting their first hospital? That's a hypothetical, but IRL Amazon tried to convince people that they wanted to be operating a chain of hair salons. My point is that it was easy to tell from the outside that this was corporate whim and they weren't going to be very willing to put up with it for long if it turned out to be genuinely hard, because there just wasn't enough alignment with the mission.
So yeah, I've no trouble understanding why they want to own a browser in theory. And since they can print money and want to hoover up talent anyway, why not just hire some engs. It looks good for the company's future growth prospects if people do believe you're serious. But it just seems to me that thus far they've shown no real hard commitment, no philosophical alignment, and no appreciation for the reasons what they're doing is difficult: it's a social problem not just a hiring one
It's actually super easy. I modified Chromium's internal code myself to do what I wanted, I added some logic in C++ and then compiled it. It just works. They mainly want to gather more data and have access to more functionality, so the LLM agent isn't constrained by the plugin API etc. It's not really hard. They won't do any browser level stuff, instead they'll basically create their own plugin on top of Chromium with full access to everything, and that's it.
Investors at Perplexity are now crying. Company is dead, killed by its supplier, like Cursor
Or this isn't real and is just a scare tactic
At first I thought this was funny, but truthfully I don't love my browser. Brave and Firefox are both mildly annoying in different ways.
I'll probably give it a spin when they release it. It's just a Chromium fork and they can afford to make it good, if the AI integration is subtle and actually useful and there are robust controls on how my data is used (and it supports high quality adblock), I could see myself using it regularly.
Why not acquire Dia from The Browser Company?
https://www.diabrowser.com/
> The browser’s access to a user’s web activity would make it the ideal platform for AI “agents” that can take actions on their behalf, like booking reservations or filling out forms, directly within the websites they use.
How about agents canceling services I no longer want? Or agents figuring out what choices I have to make to get my return picked up rather than have to take it to a drop off or pay?
There was the open web, with lots of rich api's... All of that got killed for the sake of profit and market consolidation. Are those same players going to be tolerant of agents cutting into their bottom line, of agents that cant be upsold, that dont misclick?
IF we ever get a solid agenic tooling I suspect that it will be murdered in its crib by industry.
It would be a shame if YouTube/Maps/Google/etc. suddenly would not work properly or fast on this browser...
They will work, in order to increase retention, just that Google will have to pay billions to be default search engine instead of OpenAI
No problem for smart phone users, they install the apps for these services.
so basically the logic is gather your analytic data directly and tailor AI for your needs to sell you things, basically remove middle man Google, no?
I’m assuming this is some kind of a layer on top of chromium?
Almost certainly a Chromium fork rather than just a layer, similar to how Edge, Brave and Arc are built. This gives them full control over the rendering engine and browser internals while leveraging Chromium's compatibility.
It also gives them huge ongoing costs which few engineers in the world know how to pay.
Every line of code costs something to own. Forking a few million lines is free now, but the more time passes the more you will pay to own those lines.
It literally says that in TFA.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513117
This would make giving them all my data so much easier for them. That is the endgame, right? OpenAI becomes the advertiser of record using the best, richest, most targeted data ever. And we gave it all to them. “Dumb Fucks” -Zuck
Will it be possible to disable the AI in their browser?
We're on a Google and OpenAI collision timeline. Google has to win to stay relevant, while OpenAI has to win to survive.
Looking at my own usage patterns, Google's ad business should have be long gone now, but then again I've been running adblockers since forever so maybe I just don't understand the dynamics here. Google has to recapture the perceived (or actual) lead in the AI market before its made obsolete and OpenAI has to keep Google on the defense otherwise it will just be commoditized away (I think this is more about good old market share here and no one waits around for AGI to unlock a spectacular economic value, they want each other's money now).
This is the second step in just a month or so where OpenAI directly encroaches on Google territory (first was with the recruitment of Johnny Ive to sidestep established mobile platforms and now going straight for Google's jugular).
It would be really interesting once OpenAI gets into the ad business, because right now Google has its share of ad revenue on hard allocation, and once in-stream AI advertising opens up it would surely divert some of that money.
Another reskin, I rather have the original one.
Is this the next step towards AGI?
Why not just release this as an extension? And make it work with Firefox as well. This seems why browser extensions exist at all. No need to pretend that perplexity or openai is actually going to do any work at all on the rest of the browser. And it seems overkill to release your own browser just to white label it.
IIRC most web use is mobile. Approximately 0% of mobile users can install extensions.
Edit: I forgot iOS Safari can install extensions. Android users can install Firefox and then install extensions, but this is a big ask for the typical user.
Probably still a good estimate that <0.5% of mobile users have ever installed an extension.
Everyone who has android can install Firefox and thus can install extensions. Last I checked the Android market share was nowhere close to 0%
I've never heard of someone installing a browser extension on mobile and if i haven't heard it, your regular user won't for sure.
I do it for Ublock Origin. The web without an adblocker sucks so much ass. I truly don't understand how regular users do it without killing themselves.
Yes, and that's great, but <1% of Android users use Firefox.
But they can…
My girl absolutely cannot install a browser extension, neither can most people I know.
If that is a literally true, I'd be doubting her capability to informed consent to a relationship, but that's just me. It's literally a google search and one or two button clicks. It's about the same complexity as opening and scrolling Facebook.
That’s absolutely untrue? On iOS extensions are supported, and I hope an android too!
Good point. I forget about Safari extensions because iOS forbids other browser engines.
Chrome on Android does not support extensions (maybe in the future with manifest v3?), but Firefox does.
Not in Chrome, but definitely in Firefox.
You can install add ons in Firefox mobile.
Indeed, and that's great, but the market share is too small for me to even read: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world...
The poster agreed, they said approximately 0% of mobile web users can install extensions.
I've been hearing that Chrome/Android will be supporting extensions soon.
Care to read the article?
> OpenAI decided to build its own browser, rather than simply a “plug-in” on top of another company’s browser, in order to have more control over the data it can collect, one source said.
It's pretty much impossible to create WebExtensions that provide a complete experience and feel native. The API is (perhaps rightfully so) quite restrictive.