7 ms·

Microsoft Introduces 'Copilot Mode' in Edge

67 points by Bogdanp 1y ago

crinkly 1y ago
From the Privacy Policy: There will always be clear, visual cues on your browser when Copilot is viewing or listening. "CoPilot, please install Firefox for me"
- pinewurst 1y ago
  "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
cibyr 1y ago
"built to the highest Microsoft standards of security, privacy and performance" seems perhaps importantly different from "but to the highest standards".
- askonomm 1y ago
  Translation: plain-text/no security, as much telemetry as possible, and performance depends on how beefy of a computer you have, but it better be beefy.
- meindnoch 1y ago
  I wonder if "the highest Microsoft standards" are above of below "military grade"?
- rs186 1y ago
  "the highest Microsoft standards of security, privacy and performance" is a very low bar. It doesn't add any confidence. They might as well not talk about it at all.
- summermusic 1y ago
  And then just a beat later: “…with you as the user always in control.” What a joke.
fzaninotto 1y ago
This new browser mode is a robot that replaces visitors on websites. It can't be good news for website editors... Should we (developers) start building websites for robots?
- franze 1y ago
  Well, guess what we are doing when we say SEO?
- askonomm 1y ago
  AI is building websites for AI. Let the enshittification Olympics commence!
- justapassenger 1y ago
  [dead]
- josefresco 1y ago
  We already build websites for Googlebot so I don't really see much a difference. Maybe designers should be worried because if there's nothing to "look at" there's no point in making it look nice. This feels like XML/XHTML all over again.
__loam 1y ago
Legitimately reads like an April fool's joke
TrackerFF 1y ago
A big ongoing challenge is how to automate human actions on websites - specifically those that don't offer any API for the data needed, and and make it as hard as possible to scrape them. Almost every data job I've had, have had such part time projects going on internally, typical "How do we automate data extraction from [x] site" where the websites either refuse to provide any services, or simply can't (don't have the resources). And up until now it has been some sort of RPA / Robotic Process Automation problem. I'm not talking about nefarious motives for doing such either, for our part it is just tedious task where humans spend too much time filling in forms / clicking on UI components, and doing the download manually. So while letting agents run wild on problems like this can (and surely will) lead to abuse, it will likely also free up so much time for the people doing such tasks for actual work.
- Aachen 1y ago
  > or simply can't (don't have the resources). And up until now it has been some sort of RPA / Robotic Process Automation problem. Wouldn't it be like half the cost to your organisation if you do it for them? If govt agency xyz doesn't have the resources to build this, offer to make it, get access to the source, plug it into a dead simple API, get your data and everybody's happy? I've never held a data analysis position so I have no idea if such an org would be open to it. If not, it sounds more like the former issue (gatekeeping and unwillingness) than the latter (inability or resource lack)
  - meindnoch 1y ago
    No, because then they would realize their data is worth money.
    - Aachen 1y ago
      The person above said they were approaching these places already, so latest at that time, they've realised that
  - AuthAuth 1y ago
    The site wont give you a dead simple API.
ghxst 1y ago
I had no idea that Microsoft set up a discord server for copilot.
nolok 1y ago
I don't understand what microsoft is doing with their Copilot whatever push. They have 50 different offers, all with their own pricing, and they all suck, and Microsoft themselves don't like their results in that field. Let me solve it for you Microsoft: the money maker you're sitting on today, is "hey excel, make a summary of those 8 sheets to identify our 5 most profitables products and their evolution in sales the past 3 years, add that on a new sheet at the end with a visual graph". None of their product does that right now, instead they tell you the step on how to do it. Instead of making a bazillion different weird thing, Excel and Office already have their API, just make your "AI" bridge natural talk to excel common task and see every company register it for their employee. I'm not even exagerating, I would in an instant. I tried many AI tool for excel and none of them come anywhere close to that. It must be much harder than I first thought, but then again they spent BILLIONS on this. For a company that own business logic as a basic idea, they're really terrible at exploiting it with new ideas. Even just natural talk to power query steps would be worth it.
- oidar 1y ago
  It really is super obvious that the winning move for most apps is to add an text interface with LLM capabilities. Like autocad - but LLM accessible.
  - Mystery-Machine 1y ago
    You say "text interface" because that's what you're most used to. It could as well be audio interface.
- arresin 1y ago
  The tech is arguably not there yet. From my own observations, normies get annoyed quickly because they expect it to work like deterministic software. And they tend to be way less interested in it in general, especially when I’m breathlessly telling them about this and that latest development.
  - karel-3d 1y ago
donmcronald 1y ago
> you can let Copilot see all your open tabs so it can understand the full context of what you’re exploring online Isn't that going to poison the context with low quality, SEO blog spam? How long is it going to be before content mills start filling the web with defensible lies? For example, "exploding cell phone charger X is built with a high quality transformer." The AI will mindlessly regurgitate that without considering the nuance of source. When I evaluate that stuff the source plays a major role in the weight I give to the statement. None of the AI I've seen does a proper job of considering the source and I'm guessing it's because they can't attribute sources due to the massive IP theft that was required to build the systems.
- Mystery-Machine 1y ago
  Google already has page score for every website out there. What makes you think that their LLM can't be made to use it? That statement sounds a lot like "AI can't generate human fingers, it will never be able to generate realistic images with humans in them" or "it can't do X so it will never be able to code Y". Shortsighted.
  - donmcronald 1y ago
    Google search results are much worse than they used to be. And how would an LLM extrapolate good outputs from garbage inputs?
kburman 1y ago
It feels like one user-hostile move after another from Microsoft lately. Forcing Edge, using dark patterns to block Chrome, resetting telemetry with updates, the whole Recall fiasco... and now this. It's exhausting. My working theory is they see Google's browser revenue and think, "we're the OS, we deserve a bigger cut." It's an incredible level of arrogance that's burning through decades of user trust for short-term gain. Instead of all this, why not actually compete by being better? They could make Windows a bastion of privacy that protects users from app snooping. They could foster a real native app ecosystem again, like on macOS, so the OS itself adds unique value. That's how you build loyalty, not this constant squeezing of your user base.
- autoexec 1y ago
  I feel like Microsoft's attitude is that they can screw over their users, make money hand over fist by exploiting their private and personal data, and Windows users will be powerless because there's nowhere else for them to go. Anyone who was going to use an Apple computer is already doing it. They aren't afraid of linux either (although maybe they should be since it's been gaining ground). Why care about building loyalty or adding value when you're a monopoly?
  - tracker1 1y ago
    They should be more scared... Mac, ChromeOS and Linux now have roughly 1/3 of desktop/laptop users. Linux having gained a lot of ground just this past year, and IMO Valve is probably solely responsible for most of that. Even with the Valve store cut as high as it is, and some of their sketchy terms... they've been far better stewards to gaming than MS has been to Computing/OS.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Not even close, still around 70%. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
      - 1y ago
adamrezich 1y ago
It's kind of funny how “Copilot” has become the new “Live”—this Brand Word that Microsoft marketing seems obsessed with, branding everything they can with it, completely regardless of how much they dilute whatever positive qualities their users initially associated with it.
- rs186 1y ago
  Who would thought that Microsoft did not change a single bit after two decades? A link that I found on a different HN thread that is somewhat related: https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-gates-e-mail-rant/ https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-ga...
- pndy 1y ago
  Don't forget about MSN, Windows Live, Metro. I wonder what will be the "next big thing" they'll gonna push as a brand
- x______________ 1y ago
  I (unfortunately) updated swiftkey to the latest version in an attempt to troubleshoot an issue I had, low and behold, a new copilot button has appeared! (Ironically, I was trying to remove an @ key that popped up in an app which reduced the length of my space key by 1/3rd) Edit: Disabling the copilot options in settings is necessary as they are on by default, disabling does not remove the button. Thanks to this post for reminding me to review settings after an update.. *unhappyface Edit2: So I just discovered that that you can obtain several types of debug info by triple tapping on the version number in the about screen... That's nifty!
fleebee 1y ago
Not sure I like the fact that Copilot inferred that Dylan likes football so it offered to buy tickets when Dylan launched his browser. In general, this seems to be less about empowering users and more about shoving AI in their faces. You don't need to prompt anything, it just is there.
skydhash 1y ago
> For decades, the way we’ve used browsers has remained linear: open a tab (or 20), search for something, read a page, repeat. It’s a model that’s worked well, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed. Is it linear though? I think most people are using tabs the way everyone use documents. Open one, find the passage you need and keep it there. Lots of current web app makes that hard (lazy loading, memory leaks,...). A better augmentation would be annotations. Create a new notetaking session which appears in a side bar, then either screenshot or highlight a section, then it is saved alongside the comment (and tags) and the context (link, date,..). No need for a lurking agent. ADDENDUM A somewhat simpler version can be found in Orgmode and Emacs. You can store link to almost anything and then the capture feature in Org mode can use them in templates.
tracker1 1y ago
When Edge first released, I really liked it... even made it my default on Linux for a while. Then came the in-the-box features, like coupon offers, etc... and I just had more and more crap to disable to where I just went back to Brave. I like nice browser syncing between devices. I don't even mind what that means in terms of some slack on privacy... What I don't like are in your face marketing efforts. I absolutely abhor commercials, and have been willing to pay for services that don't have them. I switched to Linux literally the first time I saw an ad in the start menu search results. I don't need Microsoft products. I'm a computer user first, and a consumer a distant second. MS really needs to learn this lesson. Just saw that US Gov is reporting 6% Linux desktop usage, which is higher than the 5% StatsCounter recently posted. Linux has gained 20-30% in just this past year, even Gaming on Linux while less than perfect/ideal is still relatively smooth for most games thanks to Valve/Steam, they definitely use their 30% cut well and while expensive seem to be at least a good steward of their ecosystem. I feel like Microsoft has completely lost he plot in a lot of ways. Azure and .Net have had every opportunity to become darlings in the developer community... the tooling and options are pretty good. VS Code has become just about the most popular developer editor (not to mention forks). Why they choose to abuse their common users is beyond me... if they just stuck to the great parts without trying to wrench every penny of value from every user they would be much more well regarded. As it stands, any company selling commercial software should seriously be working on packaging for Linux... at least appImage/Flatpak. There's especially good opportunity for competing software vendors to Adobe in this space. It's one of the few gaps, and the tide of software for Linux is definitely growing and there's plenty of room for commercial software here.
- carodgers 1y ago
  +1 for Brave!
  - anthk 1y ago
    Brave it's Spyware.
- jerrygoyal 1y ago
  I moved to Vivaldi.
hankman86 1y ago
Why has basic product management gone out of the window in this new era of AI enablement? Like on the most basic level: who ever asked for this, where is product-market fit for this kind of browser automation?
- akomtu 1y ago
  Well, it's a client-side AI spyware that monitors your activity in the internet or intranet. What Microsoft is doing makes sense if you consider that their clients are corporations and governments.
rs186 1y ago
Bloomberg's piece on Microsoft Copilot, if you haven't read it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/chatgpt-vs-copilot-inside-the-openai-and-microsoft-rivalry https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/chatgpt-v... And HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44367638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44367638 Basically, nobody wants to use Copilot, because it sucks.
- dmix 1y ago
  > Microsoft is struggling to sell its Copilot AI assistant to corporations because many of their employees want ChatGPT. So Copilot isn't using GPT? I tried googling it and one thread said they use GPT4. Maybe it's the wrapper they built that doesn't work well.
  - rs186 1y ago
    GPT and ChatGPT are two different things. One is an LLM, the other is a full product. > Maybe it's the wrapper they built that doesn't work well. That's the issue. It's almost difficult to imagine you can build a bad product on top of GPT models, but Microsoft showed us how.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deafpolygon 1y ago
more ways to try and track user behaviour and steal… i mean, request private user data.
asim 1y ago
Whoever starts by replacing the operating system with this style of interface wins. The point isn't to reinvent the browser, it's to change how we interact with technology completely. Right now it's all iteration but essentially if all you need is ChatGPT then just make the OS a chat interface to begin with.
terhechte 1y ago
So interesting to read all these negative comments. I'm actually considering installing Edge because this something I've really been wanting for some time. I run Safari & Firefox and I know there're some plugins, but this deep integration (e.g. across tabs) is missing. I usually open 15+ tabs when I'm researching something, and then being able to ask an LLM questions across these tabs is awesome. The main reason for me not to install this, honestly, is that I've heard that OpenAI is working on something similar and I already have their subscription. I might just wait a bit longer, but I really can see the appeal of this product.
nerevarthelame 1y ago
I tried using it and am not impressed. I don't know if it's possible to do any of the things shown in the promotional videos. It seems like a typical web-enabled LLM, but in a browser extension. I didn't see ANY functionality from "Copilot mode" that doesn't already exist in any other web-enabled LLM. It couldn't book anything. It didn't move through the site. It did poor analysis. It hallucinated links. It gaslit me and told me that I needed to manually do the things I was asking - and gave me incorrect instructions on how to do that. I had to double-check that I was correctly opted into this new feature because it seemed like a terrible implementation of very established technology. Every task I attempted was a frustrating failure. Embarrassingly bad stuff. If you really want to know my specific gripes: I navigated to a major hotel chain's site that I have discounted rates at, subject to availability. I asked Copilot to find me a hotel within driving distance to my home with those discounted rates available for certain dates. It claimed that it checked that the rates were available (something I didn't expect it to be able to do), and gave me a few hotels. The hotels exist, but every one of the "View hotel details" links were broken. Although it said it checked to see if rooms were available under the discounted rates, it definitely didn't. I tried to get it to book a reservation anyway, and it said that the "page isn't loading properly right now - either it's been moved or there's a glitch on the hotel's site." The hotel's site was working just fine. I navigated to a recipe website I often use. I asked Copilot to find me some recipes fitting certain basic criteria ("vegan," "quick and easy"). The links it provided to each recipe were all to the main page - not actually to the recipes themselves, even though the labeled link text suggested it would be to the individual recipe. Although the site has a plethora of vegan options, 2/4 of its recommendations were non-vegan recipes that it gave tips on how to make vegan. Recommending that I make quesadillas by "swapping nutritional yeast instead of dairy cheese" is a terrible, awful idea. Especially in the context of all the other great, already vegan recipes on the site it ignored to make this recommendation. For the other converted-to-vegan recipe, I manually searched for the original recipe (since it couldn't provide recipe-specific links) to see that the author already had a vegan version of the recipe linked in the original instructions. Copilot's veganization was unnecessary and lower quality than what the author had already provided on the site.
- aziaziazi 1y ago
  For what it worth: nutritional yeast is great to replace parmigiana-like cheese. For mozzarella it’s probable a bad choice if you want to be as close as possible, but yeast is definitely not an hallucination as a cheese replacement. I’d be interested to see one or two propositions if you’re willing to share.
thesdev 1y ago
> For decades, the way we’ve used browsers has remained linear: open a tab (or 20), search for something, read a page, repeat. It’s a model that’s worked well, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed. Maybe it doesn’t need to change if it's working well? Have you considered that?
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  Next they'll be trying to sell you on eating with your ear or something because "for millennia, the way we eat food hasn't fundamentally changed".
rich_sasha 1y ago
What I really need is a copilot plugin for my copilot. Coming up with good prompts is hard, I want an LLM fine tuned for this particular task.
aussieguy1234 1y ago
Not enabled for Linux I see
elphinstone 1y ago
A feature nobody wants in a browser nobody uses.
mortsnort 1y ago
I get the MS Copilot hate, but Perplexity, Dia, Open AI and others are entering the AI browser space. I don't think Google and MS can just sit it out and hope AI browsers don't catch on. At this point most of us have a ChatGPT tab (or 20) open at all times- it's more convenient just having it on the page. It's also genuinely revolutionary when integrated into things like Colab notebooks.
wolvesechoes 1y ago
Eh, again people complaining about not understanding this, proposing to compete etc., when truth is simple: in today's capitalism products of publicly traded companies do not matter. Company itself, or rather shareholder's belief about the company, IS a product. So it couldn't matter less if features that Microsoft pushes are useful, asked for, privacy-respecting or whatever.

67 points by Bogdanp 1y ago

From the Privacy Policy: There will always be clear, visual cues on your browser when Copilot is viewing or listening. "CoPilot, please install Firefox for me"

pinewurst 1y ago
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

cibyr 1y ago

"built to the highest Microsoft standards of security, privacy and performance" seems perhaps importantly different from "but to the highest standards".

askonomm 1y ago
Translation: plain-text/no security, as much telemetry as possible, and performance depends on how beefy of a computer you have, but it better be beefy.
meindnoch 1y ago
I wonder if "the highest Microsoft standards" are above of below "military grade"?
rs186 1y ago
"the highest Microsoft standards of security, privacy and performance" is a very low bar. It doesn't add any confidence. They might as well not talk about it at all.
summermusic 1y ago
And then just a beat later: “…with you as the user always in control.” What a joke.

fzaninotto 1y ago

This new browser mode is a robot that replaces visitors on websites. It can't be good news for website editors... Should we (developers) start building websites for robots?

franze 1y ago
Well, guess what we are doing when we say SEO?
askonomm 1y ago
AI is building websites for AI. Let the enshittification Olympics commence!
justapassenger 1y ago
[dead]
josefresco 1y ago
We already build websites for Googlebot so I don't really see much a difference. Maybe designers should be worried because if there's nothing to "look at" there's no point in making it look nice. This feels like XML/XHTML all over again.

__loam 1y ago

Legitimately reads like an April fool's joke

TrackerFF 1y ago

A big ongoing challenge is how to automate human actions on websites - specifically those that don't offer any API for the data needed, and and make it as hard as possible to scrape them. Almost every data job I've had, have had such part time projects going on internally, typical "How do we automate data extraction from [x] site" where the websites either refuse to provide any services, or simply can't (don't have the resources). And up until now it has been some sort of RPA / Robotic Process Automation problem. I'm not talking about nefarious motives for doing such either, for our part it is just tedious task where humans spend too much time filling in forms / clicking on UI components, and doing the download manually. So while letting agents run wild on problems like this can (and surely will) lead to abuse, it will likely also free up so much time for the people doing such tasks for actual work.

Aachen 1y ago
> or simply can't (don't have the resources). And up until now it has been some sort of RPA / Robotic Process Automation problem. Wouldn't it be like half the cost to your organisation if you do it for them? If govt agency xyz doesn't have the resources to build this, offer to make it, get access to the source, plug it into a dead simple API, get your data and everybody's happy? I've never held a data analysis position so I have no idea if such an org would be open to it. If not, it sounds more like the former issue (gatekeeping and unwillingness) than the latter (inability or resource lack)
- meindnoch 1y ago
  No, because then they would realize their data is worth money.
  - Aachen 1y ago
    The person above said they were approaching these places already, so latest at that time, they've realised that
- AuthAuth 1y ago
  The site wont give you a dead simple API.

ghxst 1y ago

I had no idea that Microsoft set up a discord server for copilot.

nolok 1y ago

I don't understand what microsoft is doing with their Copilot whatever push. They have 50 different offers, all with their own pricing, and they all suck, and Microsoft themselves don't like their results in that field. Let me solve it for you Microsoft: the money maker you're sitting on today, is "hey excel, make a summary of those 8 sheets to identify our 5 most profitables products and their evolution in sales the past 3 years, add that on a new sheet at the end with a visual graph". None of their product does that right now, instead they tell you the step on how to do it. Instead of making a bazillion different weird thing, Excel and Office already have their API, just make your "AI" bridge natural talk to excel common task and see every company register it for their employee. I'm not even exagerating, I would in an instant. I tried many AI tool for excel and none of them come anywhere close to that. It must be much harder than I first thought, but then again they spent BILLIONS on this. For a company that own business logic as a basic idea, they're really terrible at exploiting it with new ideas. Even just natural talk to power query steps would be worth it.

oidar 1y ago
It really is super obvious that the winning move for most apps is to add an text interface with LLM capabilities. Like autocad - but LLM accessible.
- Mystery-Machine 1y ago
  You say "text interface" because that's what you're most used to. It could as well be audio interface.
arresin 1y ago
The tech is arguably not there yet. From my own observations, normies get annoyed quickly because they expect it to work like deterministic software. And they tend to be way less interested in it in general, especially when I’m breathlessly telling them about this and that latest development.
- karel-3d 1y ago

donmcronald 1y ago

> you can let Copilot see all your open tabs so it can understand the full context of what you’re exploring online Isn't that going to poison the context with low quality, SEO blog spam? How long is it going to be before content mills start filling the web with defensible lies? For example, "exploding cell phone charger X is built with a high quality transformer." The AI will mindlessly regurgitate that without considering the nuance of source. When I evaluate that stuff the source plays a major role in the weight I give to the statement. None of the AI I've seen does a proper job of considering the source and I'm guessing it's because they can't attribute sources due to the massive IP theft that was required to build the systems.

Mystery-Machine 1y ago
Google already has page score for every website out there. What makes you think that their LLM can't be made to use it? That statement sounds a lot like "AI can't generate human fingers, it will never be able to generate realistic images with humans in them" or "it can't do X so it will never be able to code Y". Shortsighted.
- donmcronald 1y ago
  Google search results are much worse than they used to be. And how would an LLM extrapolate good outputs from garbage inputs?

kburman 1y ago

It feels like one user-hostile move after another from Microsoft lately. Forcing Edge, using dark patterns to block Chrome, resetting telemetry with updates, the whole Recall fiasco... and now this. It's exhausting. My working theory is they see Google's browser revenue and think, "we're the OS, we deserve a bigger cut." It's an incredible level of arrogance that's burning through decades of user trust for short-term gain. Instead of all this, why not actually compete by being better? They could make Windows a bastion of privacy that protects users from app snooping. They could foster a real native app ecosystem again, like on macOS, so the OS itself adds unique value. That's how you build loyalty, not this constant squeezing of your user base.

autoexec 1y ago
I feel like Microsoft's attitude is that they can screw over their users, make money hand over fist by exploiting their private and personal data, and Windows users will be powerless because there's nowhere else for them to go. Anyone who was going to use an Apple computer is already doing it. They aren't afraid of linux either (although maybe they should be since it's been gaining ground). Why care about building loyalty or adding value when you're a monopoly?
- tracker1 1y ago
  They should be more scared... Mac, ChromeOS and Linux now have roughly 1/3 of desktop/laptop users. Linux having gained a lot of ground just this past year, and IMO Valve is probably solely responsible for most of that. Even with the Valve store cut as high as it is, and some of their sketchy terms... they've been far better stewards to gaming than MS has been to Computing/OS.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Not even close, still around 70%. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
    - 1y ago

adamrezich 1y ago

It's kind of funny how “Copilot” has become the new “Live”—this Brand Word that Microsoft marketing seems obsessed with, branding everything they can with it, completely regardless of how much they dilute whatever positive qualities their users initially associated with it.

rs186 1y ago
Who would thought that Microsoft did not change a single bit after two decades? A link that I found on a different HN thread that is somewhat related: https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-gates-e-mail-rant/ https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-bill-ga...
pndy 1y ago
Don't forget about MSN, Windows Live, Metro. I wonder what will be the "next big thing" they'll gonna push as a brand
x______________ 1y ago
I (unfortunately) updated swiftkey to the latest version in an attempt to troubleshoot an issue I had, low and behold, a new copilot button has appeared! (Ironically, I was trying to remove an @ key that popped up in an app which reduced the length of my space key by 1/3rd) Edit: Disabling the copilot options in settings is necessary as they are on by default, disabling does not remove the button. Thanks to this post for reminding me to review settings after an update.. *unhappyface Edit2: So I just discovered that that you can obtain several types of debug info by triple tapping on the version number in the about screen... That's nifty!

fleebee 1y ago

Not sure I like the fact that Copilot inferred that Dylan likes football so it offered to buy tickets when Dylan launched his browser. In general, this seems to be less about empowering users and more about shoving AI in their faces. You don't need to prompt anything, it just is there.

skydhash 1y ago

> For decades, the way we’ve used browsers has remained linear: open a tab (or 20), search for something, read a page, repeat. It’s a model that’s worked well, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed. Is it linear though? I think most people are using tabs the way everyone use documents. Open one, find the passage you need and keep it there. Lots of current web app makes that hard (lazy loading, memory leaks,...). A better augmentation would be annotations. Create a new notetaking session which appears in a side bar, then either screenshot or highlight a section, then it is saved alongside the comment (and tags) and the context (link, date,..). No need for a lurking agent. ADDENDUM A somewhat simpler version can be found in Orgmode and Emacs. You can store link to almost anything and then the capture feature in Org mode can use them in templates.

tracker1 1y ago

When Edge first released, I really liked it... even made it my default on Linux for a while. Then came the in-the-box features, like coupon offers, etc... and I just had more and more crap to disable to where I just went back to Brave. I like nice browser syncing between devices. I don't even mind what that means in terms of some slack on privacy... What I don't like are in your face marketing efforts. I absolutely abhor commercials, and have been willing to pay for services that don't have them. I switched to Linux literally the first time I saw an ad in the start menu search results. I don't need Microsoft products. I'm a computer user first, and a consumer a distant second. MS really needs to learn this lesson. Just saw that US Gov is reporting 6% Linux desktop usage, which is higher than the 5% StatsCounter recently posted. Linux has gained 20-30% in just this past year, even Gaming on Linux while less than perfect/ideal is still relatively smooth for most games thanks to Valve/Steam, they definitely use their 30% cut well and while expensive seem to be at least a good steward of their ecosystem. I feel like Microsoft has completely lost he plot in a lot of ways. Azure and .Net have had every opportunity to become darlings in the developer community... the tooling and options are pretty good. VS Code has become just about the most popular developer editor (not to mention forks). Why they choose to abuse their common users is beyond me... if they just stuck to the great parts without trying to wrench every penny of value from every user they would be much more well regarded. As it stands, any company selling commercial software should seriously be working on packaging for Linux... at least appImage/Flatpak. There's especially good opportunity for competing software vendors to Adobe in this space. It's one of the few gaps, and the tide of software for Linux is definitely growing and there's plenty of room for commercial software here.

carodgers 1y ago
+1 for Brave!
- anthk 1y ago
  Brave it's Spyware.
jerrygoyal 1y ago
I moved to Vivaldi.

hankman86 1y ago

Why has basic product management gone out of the window in this new era of AI enablement? Like on the most basic level: who ever asked for this, where is product-market fit for this kind of browser automation?

akomtu 1y ago
Well, it's a client-side AI spyware that monitors your activity in the internet or intranet. What Microsoft is doing makes sense if you consider that their clients are corporations and governments.

rs186 1y ago

Bloomberg's piece on Microsoft Copilot, if you haven't read it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/chatgpt-vs-copilot-inside-the-openai-and-microsoft-rivalry https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/chatgpt-v... And HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44367638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44367638 Basically, nobody wants to use Copilot, because it sucks.

dmix 1y ago
> Microsoft is struggling to sell its Copilot AI assistant to corporations because many of their employees want ChatGPT. So Copilot isn't using GPT? I tried googling it and one thread said they use GPT4. Maybe it's the wrapper they built that doesn't work well.
- rs186 1y ago
  GPT and ChatGPT are two different things. One is an LLM, the other is a full product. > Maybe it's the wrapper they built that doesn't work well. That's the issue. It's almost difficult to imagine you can build a bad product on top of GPT models, but Microsoft showed us how.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deafpolygon 1y ago

more ways to try and track user behaviour and steal… i mean, request private user data.

asim 1y ago

Whoever starts by replacing the operating system with this style of interface wins. The point isn't to reinvent the browser, it's to change how we interact with technology completely. Right now it's all iteration but essentially if all you need is ChatGPT then just make the OS a chat interface to begin with.

terhechte 1y ago

So interesting to read all these negative comments. I'm actually considering installing Edge because this something I've really been wanting for some time. I run Safari & Firefox and I know there're some plugins, but this deep integration (e.g. across tabs) is missing. I usually open 15+ tabs when I'm researching something, and then being able to ask an LLM questions across these tabs is awesome. The main reason for me not to install this, honestly, is that I've heard that OpenAI is working on something similar and I already have their subscription. I might just wait a bit longer, but I really can see the appeal of this product.

nerevarthelame 1y ago

I tried using it and am not impressed. I don't know if it's possible to do any of the things shown in the promotional videos. It seems like a typical web-enabled LLM, but in a browser extension. I didn't see ANY functionality from "Copilot mode" that doesn't already exist in any other web-enabled LLM. It couldn't book anything. It didn't move through the site. It did poor analysis. It hallucinated links. It gaslit me and told me that I needed to manually do the things I was asking - and gave me incorrect instructions on how to do that. I had to double-check that I was correctly opted into this new feature because it seemed like a terrible implementation of very established technology. Every task I attempted was a frustrating failure. Embarrassingly bad stuff. If you really want to know my specific gripes: I navigated to a major hotel chain's site that I have discounted rates at, subject to availability. I asked Copilot to find me a hotel within driving distance to my home with those discounted rates available for certain dates. It claimed that it checked that the rates were available (something I didn't expect it to be able to do), and gave me a few hotels. The hotels exist, but every one of the "View hotel details" links were broken. Although it said it checked to see if rooms were available under the discounted rates, it definitely didn't. I tried to get it to book a reservation anyway, and it said that the "page isn't loading properly right now - either it's been moved or there's a glitch on the hotel's site." The hotel's site was working just fine. I navigated to a recipe website I often use. I asked Copilot to find me some recipes fitting certain basic criteria ("vegan," "quick and easy"). The links it provided to each recipe were all to the main page - not actually to the recipes themselves, even though the labeled link text suggested it would be to the individual recipe. Although the site has a plethora of vegan options, 2/4 of its recommendations were non-vegan recipes that it gave tips on how to make vegan. Recommending that I make quesadillas by "swapping nutritional yeast instead of dairy cheese" is a terrible, awful idea. Especially in the context of all the other great, already vegan recipes on the site it ignored to make this recommendation. For the other converted-to-vegan recipe, I manually searched for the original recipe (since it couldn't provide recipe-specific links) to see that the author already had a vegan version of the recipe linked in the original instructions. Copilot's veganization was unnecessary and lower quality than what the author had already provided on the site.

aziaziazi 1y ago
For what it worth: nutritional yeast is great to replace parmigiana-like cheese. For mozzarella it’s probable a bad choice if you want to be as close as possible, but yeast is definitely not an hallucination as a cheese replacement. I’d be interested to see one or two propositions if you’re willing to share.

thesdev 1y ago

bigstrat2003 1y ago
Next they'll be trying to sell you on eating with your ear or something because "for millennia, the way we eat food hasn't fundamentally changed".

rich_sasha 1y ago

What I really need is a copilot plugin for my copilot. Coming up with good prompts is hard, I want an LLM fine tuned for this particular task.

aussieguy1234 1y ago

Not enabled for Linux I see

elphinstone 1y ago

A feature nobody wants in a browser nobody uses.

mortsnort 1y ago

I get the MS Copilot hate, but Perplexity, Dia, Open AI and others are entering the AI browser space. I don't think Google and MS can just sit it out and hope AI browsers don't catch on. At this point most of us have a ChatGPT tab (or 20) open at all times- it's more convenient just having it on the page. It's also genuinely revolutionary when integrated into things like Colab notebooks.

wolvesechoes 1y ago

Eh, again people complaining about not understanding this, proposing to compete etc., when truth is simple: in today's capitalism products of publicly traded companies do not matter. Company itself, or rather shareholder's belief about the company, IS a product. So it couldn't matter less if features that Microsoft pushes are useful, asked for, privacy-respecting or whatever.