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Two of top Chrome co-founders, beng and darin, who are also Firefox alumni, are now working at OAI. It's rather surprising if they do not build a web browser. T

Two of top Chrome co-founders, beng and darin, who are also Firefox alumni, are now working at OAI. It's rather surprising if they do not build a web browser. These are browser people. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bengoodger/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/darin-fisher-7059ab/ I honestly wonder whether they even have to buy Chrome. They can just fork it. This feels more like trolling to me tbh.

crowcroft 1y ago
Perhaps they will fork it anyway, but the type of people that ill flock to an OpenAI web browser are the people that already install and use ChatGPT. Chrome specifically hands a huge audience of tech laggards over to OpenAI very very quickly.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
I think it's less about the difficulty of forking versus buying Chrome and more about not wanting to compete with a Google owned Gemini enabled Chrome
chvid 1y ago
It is about brand and who gets to be default search engine.
dspillett 1y ago
> I honestly wonder whether they even have to buy Chrome. Momentum. Any change of direction they take after such a purchase is taken by a huge number of current users whether they like it or not (unless they dislike it enough to make the effort to switch their daily driver browser). > They can just fork it. That would result in much lower user numbers unless their changes are incredibly attractive. Most users will start where they are due, again, to product momentum.
npc_anon 1y ago
When you fork Chrome, you have zero users instead of 4 billion.
- jongjong 1y ago
  It's not like OpenAI would struggle to acquire users for a new AI browser. It's not like they don't have a platform with millions of AI-loving users already.
  - npc_anon 1y ago
    They absolutely would struggle. 70% of browser usage is mobile where people use the pre-installed browser: Chrome or Safari. There's not a single alternative mobile browser that has more than 2.5% market share.
jongjong 1y ago
WTF. I had the exact same idea. Why buy Chrome when Chromium is open source and there are existing successful forks (e.g. Brave browser) which managed to do it... Why pay $100 million for something you can have for free? It's not like Open AI would struggle to find users for their new browser... They could just advertise it "Download our new GPT Browser" on their website above the chat window.

crowcroft 1y ago

Perhaps they will fork it anyway, but the type of people that ill flock to an OpenAI web browser are the people that already install and use ChatGPT. Chrome specifically hands a huge audience of tech laggards over to OpenAI very very quickly.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

I think it's less about the difficulty of forking versus buying Chrome and more about not wanting to compete with a Google owned Gemini enabled Chrome

chvid 1y ago

It is about brand and who gets to be default search engine.

dspillett 1y ago

> I honestly wonder whether they even have to buy Chrome. Momentum. Any change of direction they take after such a purchase is taken by a huge number of current users whether they like it or not (unless they dislike it enough to make the effort to switch their daily driver browser). > They can just fork it. That would result in much lower user numbers unless their changes are incredibly attractive. Most users will start where they are due, again, to product momentum.

npc_anon 1y ago

When you fork Chrome, you have zero users instead of 4 billion.

jongjong 1y ago
It's not like OpenAI would struggle to acquire users for a new AI browser. It's not like they don't have a platform with millions of AI-loving users already.
- npc_anon 1y ago
  They absolutely would struggle. 70% of browser usage is mobile where people use the pre-installed browser: Chrome or Safari. There's not a single alternative mobile browser that has more than 2.5% market share.

jongjong 1y ago

WTF. I had the exact same idea. Why buy Chrome when Chromium is open source and there are existing successful forks (e.g. Brave browser) which managed to do it... Why pay $100 million for something you can have for free? It's not like Open AI would struggle to find users for their new browser... They could just advertise it "Download our new GPT Browser" on their website above the chat window.