8 ms·

Chrome's New AI Features

wiredpancake 1y ago
[dead]
hellcow 1y ago
Another showcase of Google using their dominant market position for Chrome to gain advantage in other markets, like AI agents.
- m4r71n 1y ago
  I tend to agree. If this was built as a true browser enhancement, it would allow you to select the model of your choice or even plug it into a locally running LLM. This being exclusive to Gemini just juices up their usage numbers to make their investments more justifiable. I wonder if Firefox will ever introduce any similar features.
  - rambojohnson 1y ago
    > I wonder if Firefox will ever introduce any similar features. I hope they never do. Nobody’s asking to have AI shoved down their throats, spying on them and profiling everything they do.
  - pogue 1y ago
    Firefox does have that and you can choose from different models or even a local one (last time I checked)! https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot
    - glenstein 1y ago
      Is it integrated into the browser at all or is it basically a browser tab?
    - m4r71n 1y ago
      Not quite the same thing. Google's features seem to give the model the ability to control the browser, not just act upon the text within a given web page.
- pogue 1y ago
  If only there was some law that prohibited monopolistic practices like these that could prevent or stop something like that from happening that could be enforced by a branch of the government... *sigh* just a utopian pipe dream, I suppose
jari_mustonen 1y ago
So they integrate Gemini to summarize open web pages and consolidate all your open tabs into summaries. (Open lot's of pages, then summarize them all.) You can search your history with natural language and type Gemini queries directly into the address bar. This will give them a cognitive profile of you: reading comprehension, decision-making patterns, knowledge gaps, etc. Scary.
- vorticalbox 1y ago
  Stack that with how you write (drive, emails, everything you post on the internet) to gain a writing fingerprint too. I can imagine a bad actor getting hold of this putting it into a LLM given all this how would I manipulate this person to do x,y,z.
croes 1y ago
Does Google provide a version without AI? For people who don’t want AI in their browser.
pogue 1y ago
This sounds an awful lot like Microsoft's Recall, only implemented in the browser. Granted, there have been a lot of times I have trouble finding a website in my history, open tabs or even bookmarks, so I could potentially see how that might be advantageous as long as I was in a situation where I had a second browser for "non-work" related tasks, or this was strictly prohibited in in-private mode. >4. Find webpages you previously visited >For those frustrating instances when you want to jump back into a past project but don’t want to scroll through your history to find an important website you previously visited, soon you’ll be able to use Gemini in Chrome to recall it for you. Once launched, you can try prompts like “what was the website that I saw the walnut desk on last week?” or “what was that blog I read on back to school shopping?” As for their "agentic browsing assistant", I don't have much trouble adding stuff to my shopping cart or other minor tasks. I'm still waiting on that 'Google Duplex' [1] feature they announced years ago that claimed Google would make phone calls for me to make appointments and etc. Make a doctor's appointment? Dispute a charge on my bill? That's what I want. [1] https://youtu.be/D5VN56jQMWM https://youtu.be/D5VN56jQMWM
- Scene_Cast2 1y ago
  I find that Chrome has a fairly crippled history by default (worse than any other browser I've ever used). It's so bad that I ended up installing a history extension. Works much better.
  - pogue 1y ago
    Which one? I mostly have trouble keeping too many browser tabs open on mobile. Granted, I use Brave & it now organizes closed tabs. On desktop, it has a similar Ai feature for tab management to the one Google described, but it's still not great. I'd honestly appreciate some kind of AI tab management, history/bookmarks saving, summarizing & organizing that would put my old tabs to some kind of reading list that would remind me what I never closed down the line, archive the links I visited & my bookmarks incase of linkrot they would still be saved. Make sure if I was writing a comment on Reddit or similar site, saved it as a draft, etc, etc. That kind of "Smart" browser management system, that I could preferably run myself or had some privacy guarantees (for whatever they're worth) would definitely something I'd consider paying for.
thw_9a83c 1y ago
Sometimes I wish companies would stop forcing AI features down our throats and putting them just everywhere. At least I hope I can properly disable all of this. I don't need an AI agent scanning everything behind my back.
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
  Just use chromium
  - fsflover 1y ago
    Or, better, Firefox.
    - abdullahkhalids 1y ago
      Firefox has had AI chatbot integration in its sidebar since 133 [1] (Currently we are on 143). Fortunately, you have to sign in manually into the relevant service. I haven't tried it so don't know what happens next. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot
      - collinfunk 1y ago
        You can also hide it in the sidebar. I did that and forgot it existed for the most part.
    - braebo 1y ago
      Or better yet, Brave!
      - fsflover 1y ago
        Which relies on Google-controlled codebase?
- Nzen 1y ago
  It looks like [0] access to gemini will only be for subscribers, given that it costs them money. This is, "of course", distinct from ai mode [1] in google search that happens from the address bar in chrome. The first video implies that the difference involves throwing the current web page into the query as context so someone can ask "is this recipe gluten-free?" on a recipe webpage. [0] https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-app-updates-io-2025/#chrome https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-app-updates-io-20... [1] https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-update/#ai-mode-search https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-up...
keyboardJones 1y ago
Very interested to see how well the agentic features work compared to ChatGPT’s cloud version. At the very least, I imagine bot detection/prevention (I.e., CAPTCHA) will be less of issue with Google’s strategy since the browser’s fingerprint will differ Chrome user to Chrome user.
iruoy 1y ago
Funny how this announcement comes days after Google learned that it didn't need to sell Chrome
reclusive-sky 1y ago
Some of these features would be nice to have, but I'm not sure I even want my browser to have these capabilities unless there is a mechanism to keep it all local. This is a monumental change to the amount of user data Google can collect via Chrome.
- thw_9a83c 1y ago
  > ...unless there is a mechanism to keep it all local I'm not sure the Google is a trustworthy party [0] to believe when they give you some hard-to-find option to keep data local and not use it for user profiling and ad targeting. Google is essentially a data mining business. Some opportunities are simply hard for them to resist. [0]: <https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/google-sued-for-tracking-consumers-after-they-opted-out-a2966481024/ https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/google-s...>
ruralfam 1y ago
Not a comment re: AI in Chrome. I did click into the video to hopefully get an understanding of the features,. but sadly did not. Sorta got an idea, but the jump cuts, super-quick overviews, trying to identify everyone speaking, etc. E.g. ...something about tabs... ...used to take 20 minutes, now seconds... ...working with OTHER Google products (WTH)... Hey Google, make a simpler, more accessible video that is "just the facts mam". Dozens of jump cuts in a few minutes is disconcerting, and may prove dangerous to some.
ActionHank 1y ago
This will surely bring the users back after killing adblockers /s
- deckar01 1y ago
  The AI mode does seem to be free of ads. The grocery shopping use case seems ridiculous, yet is telling. What kind of compensation might they get for agents putting promoted products in your cart?
  - cwillu 1y ago
    ..for now. Just like last time.
akomtu 1y ago
More AI spyware running on user devices?
- dmix 1y ago
  They dont need LLMs to spy on you. Their ad network and google analytics is already everywhere on the internet and mobile.
  - akomtu 1y ago
    Nearly half of their users use ad blockers. The AI spyware, on the other hand, bypasses ad blockers and can answer questions like "what was the user up to on Sep 18?" These short summaries will be carefully kept in database, and in a few years Google will have a nearly perfect cognitive model of all their users. The value of such data is hard to measure. Every big advertiser or a tyrant would sell their soul to understand how to manipulate their populace better. You can't have this with today's ad networks.
HardCodedBias 1y ago
Seems reasonable TBH. I don't know the future of browsers given the trends in AI, but it seems fine to add an opt in ability to browsers to allow an LLM to access the current (or a set) of tabs. If it works it would reduce the amount of copy-paste, which seems like a good thing. It's hardly a killer feature. I'm still going to use chatgpt (and gemini) a tremendous amount.
xg15 1y ago
When the webpage AI argues with the browser AI, which argues with the OS AI which argues with the on-chip mainboard, CPU and GPU AIs, while the monitor AIs frantically try to make notes and the smarthome AI watches all of it and can only shake its metaphorical head.
gl-prod 1y ago
Oh, look a wild Microsoft Recall appears, sure I want the AI to know my browser history and what I do on the web
bapak 1y ago
Are you kidding me!? We are living in the future and the first thing we (have to) worry about is that something will be used against us. I really want the 2008 Google where everything they made was welcomed and not hated on sight. Agentic browser? This. is. what. I. want. Asking the browser about "that specific thing I might have seen last week?" Sign me the f up! I'm not being sarcastic, I really wish I could have all of this and not having to worry about antagonistic companies and governments.
- thehamkercat 1y ago
  are you sure that you're not being sarcastic?
  - bapak 1y ago
    It seems you failed to read my comment. You don't want your computer to help you with your daily tasks?
andrei_says_ 1y ago
How does one disable this feature?
- christophilus 1y ago
  By installing LibreWolf.
- rogerbinns 1y ago
  Apparently using Linux does the trick too. I have no idea what technical limitation exists to prevent the code from working on Linux.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  Settings -> AI Innovations There are several toggles there. I also had to click an agree button the first time I used it.
liquid_thyme 1y ago
A lot of these new AI features can be helpful as long as the users' control the data. Is there an alternate world where Google might become the good guy here? In this world, as might be expected, the company making the worlds best spyware, wants to expand its spying.
lawlessone 1y ago
>Combat more sophisticated scams with Gemini Nano Fantastic, Googles AI will be fighting to stop the scams Googles advertising promotes to me...
dmix 1y ago
That agentic stuff is going to be a big deal. Probably the most interesting part of LLMs besides coding. Assuming it works well
- jstummbillig 1y ago
  The interesting part about this variant is, that it's actually happening in my browser. I can't see how else this is going to happen, for various real world reasons. This feels actually tangible and potentially useful. With ChatGPT I am just confused about when/why I would press "Agent".
cons0le 1y ago
I don't want any of this crap. We need to push for the right to opt out of AI features. All of this garbage should be opt in.
- salomonk_mur 1y ago
  You don't want automatic browsing of tedious tasks? I really do.
  - brazukadev 1y ago
    like what, reading & commenting on HN?
  - robofanatic 1y ago
    I certainly don’t want AI to buy groceries for me while I’m “busy” doing something else.
    - smileysteve 1y ago
      It's like using Alexa to shop, or when an Amazon ad comes on it and saves to the cart, only your order has a delivery cost and it's perishable
      - reaperducer 1y ago
        Reminds me of the one-button Amazon magnets that you'd stick to the refrigerator. Press the "Gatorade" button, and Gatorade shows up at the front door the next day. Except that it might cost you $2.49, or it might cost $12.88. There was no way of knowing beforehand. (Those things were awesome tech, BTW. You'd program it with your phone via the equivalent of an acoustic modem.)
    - adrianmonk 1y ago
      I wouldn't mind help with grocery orders. I like to check which apples are on special and maybe buy a different variety from normal depending on the price. My grocery store makes this really tedious because they don't have a feature to sort by price per pound. So I have a stupid ritual where I ctrl-F "($0." and repeatedly ctrl-G to see all the apples under $1/pound. Then I do it again with ctrl-F "($1." to see the ones in the $1-$2/pound price range. And there are several other products with similar annoying processes. If an AI could just do that for me, it would save me time. I don't actually think present-day AI would do it reliably enough, but the concept sounds fine.
kixiQu 1y ago
Can I block it as a site host? (Please don't respond about how I shouldn't want to and isn't it just like some other usecase that I'd obviously want not to block)
- zamadatix 1y ago
  I think that depends on what you mean by "block it as a site host".
  - kixiQu 1y ago
    > You can now ask questions about the entire page you’re on right from the omnibox. Chrome can suggest relevant questions based on the context of the page to help you kickstart your search. You'll get a helpful AI Overview from Search right alongside the page, with the ability to ask follow-up questions in AI Mode, so you can get helpful information without leaving the page. I've done the normal things to exclude my site from search. I would like this to not run on my site either.
scrollop 1y ago
They're all wearing shades of green.
wrs 1y ago
It is astonishing that the word “privacy” appears zero times in this announcement. There have been repeated controversies over exactly how Google sees just the URL I visit. Now they want to see the entire contents of multiple browser tabs?
- janalsncm 1y ago
  You are right about the omnibox changes. But the security enhancements appear to be using Gemini nano which can run on device. They kind of buried that detail though. https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/gemini-nano-offline/ https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/gemini-nano-...
  - simonw 1y ago
    Yikes! Given the inherent threat of prompt injection, using the weakest available version of Gemini seems like a particularly bad idea. Not that even the strongest models are 100% effective at spotting prompt injection attacks, but they have way more of a fighting chance than Gemini nano does.
    - tadfisher 1y ago
      You could contort the threat model such that prompt injection is something to worry about with a local model operating on local data and serving local results, sure.
      - BryantD 1y ago
        I think the "local results" assumption is not completely accurate. This line: "You tell Gemini in Chrome what you want to get done, and it acts on web pages on your behalf, while you focus on other things" implies that the local agent will perform in-browser actions, which in theory enables data exfiltration.
        tadfisher 1y ago
everdrive 1y ago
Does anyone know if Chromium is spared of these features?
- ugh123 1y ago
  If built from source, likely yes. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/
ugh123 1y ago
Taking a quick test spin. Seems to be enabled (on mac) by the existing "Gemini in Chrome" extension but requires a Chrome update. Which has a global shortcut (across all mac apps) of "Ctrl+g" (this can be changed). The additional AI features seem to come from the tab content's integration into the Gemini console (previously (I believe) the Gemini extension was merely a thin console to the Gemini service)). The direct tab integration works by first showing the Gemini console (ctrl-g or Gemini icon in the mac system tray) where there is then a 'Share current page' icon below the text view. This adds a blue border around the chrome window indicating the current page can be shared with chrome. It's not clear, but I believe the page content is only shared once a prompt is made intending to use the page's content. However, the share-enablement remains enabled for all tabs (all tab windows will have the blue border) until turned off in the Gemini consol. Again, it's not clear if just merely browsing these tabs will automatically share that content with Google. The Gemini integration does not perform actions (can't ask it to do stuff directly with the site's content (navigate, click buttons, etc). But direct summarization works well (try it on an HN comment page or news article). Overall, I like this feature as long as I understand what and when things are being shared and ability to turn off easily.
- the_snooze 1y ago
  >It's not clear, but I believe the page content is only shared once a prompt is made intending to use the page's content. If it's only processing page content as the user requests it, then how would feature 4 "Find webpages you previously visited" work? Seems like it would need to process everything in order to enable prompt-based content recall.
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    The article seems to say and show that once you prompt it searches your history by page titles and can then dig deeper into the top hits. The permissions in Chrome seem to agree with this: > History search, powered by AI Use everyday language to search your browsing history and find sites you visited. You can also ask questions and get answers based on your browsing history. > When you search browsing history, your history searches, the page content of best matches, and generated model outputs are sent to Google It's also worth noting enabling history awareness is a separate toggle from having Gemini enabled, and it doesn't seem to be able to answer anything about history when I turn it off. Sharing the currently open pages also seems to be a separate permissions toggle from either of these.
M4v3R 1y ago
This seems huge to me. As in: the initial release of Google Chrome huge. I don’t know if they can really pull off things they showed but if they do I’m sure this will be a massive success. Which is pretty sad considering the privacy implications for this. Imagine how much more data they will have on everyone. Scary.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  >As in: the initial release of Google Chrome huge. Nope, not even 0.01% of that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
selectnull 1y ago
That reminds me to donate to Ladybird.
simonw 1y ago
Anthropic's "Claude for Chrome" pilot from a few weeks back spent most of the announcement article talking about security and threats from prompt injection: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-chrome https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-chrome This announcement from Chrome themselves hardly mentions that at all.
- tadfisher 1y ago
  That's because Claude can interact with web pages, potentially exfiltrating data. This Gemini integration apparently cannot.
  - simonw 1y ago
    From the linked post: > In the coming months, we’ll be introducing agentic capabilities to Gemini in Chrome. These will let Gemini in Chrome handle those tedious tasks that take up so much of your time, like booking a haircut or ordering your weekly groceries.
    - tadfisher 1y ago
      Then let's put down the megaphone until that announcement?
      - M4v3R 1y ago
        It will be too late when it happens, cat will already be out of the bag.
  - azinman2 1y ago
    Isn’t that what they’re promising with the agent?
bflesch 1y ago
I've just hard-pinned chrome v138 so ublock origin keeps working, so happy to hear it is also saving me from the AI features.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  138 already had AI shovelware in it, but at least you're avoiding more. Btw if you launch with --disablefeatures=ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported,ExtensionManifestV2Disabled you can squeeze a few more versions out https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/2977#discussioncomment-13593599 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/29... as CLI based flags tend to live much longer than the GUI flags.
- mh- 1y ago
  Any tips on doing this on mac? I googled (ha) for a few minutes but couldn't find a straightforward answer.
shadowgovt 1y ago
Honestl, agentic browsing on grocery sites would be pretty great... But mostly because grocery sites have some of the worst UX in existence.
jackdoe 1y ago
I suggest the people working on those features watch Neil Postman's "The Surrender of Culture to Technology": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrv7DIHllE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrv7DIHllE Part of me is actually excited for the acceleration of the end of the web, I even wrote https://punkx.org/jackdoe/zero.txt https://punkx.org/jackdoe/zero.txt few days ago in frustration. The sooner it ends the better. I really don't want to see "summarization" tokens of other people's tokens.
- cons0le 1y ago
  Great writing, and great website. Text based pages like this are superior in every way for not wasting time
xnx 1y ago
Agentic browsing in Chrome is a really big deal. For the first time in 30 years the "user agent" will really act like one instead of being a mere browser. In 10 years it will be passé to use the web in real time vs. having an agent acting on your behalf and distilling the information you want.
- lawlessone 1y ago
  exactly, why read books or watch movies when i can just have my personal AI summarize them. This will open up a future of webpages , sites and services exclusively made for our bots to read and transcribe to us.
picardo 1y ago
Last time I checked the context window for the embedded Gemini Nano was 1024 tokens. I hope they have reconsidered that limitation.
etothepii 1y ago
And yet even on the page about Chrome's new AI assistant is a cookie pop-up ...
jimjimjim 1y ago
Well, this sounds terrible. Asking the AI "what was the site where i saw a walnut desk" would mean that enough data has to be stored (locally but how long until there is a pro version where it stored and processed centrally). Isn't that data storage a security nightmare?
neves 1y ago
My favorite Gemini feature is pasting an url with cultural events and say: add these events to my calendar. Also works with images
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
Calling it now, these features wont work with an adblocker enabled within 6 months. Not that I asked for any of this anyway.
andrew_eu 1y ago
I've used probably 15 or 20 web browsers in my lifetime and all of them had the same barely searchable table of URLs as their only history view. Why couldn't we have full text search of the pages, or a view that reflects tab histories as some kind of graph, or UIs that support any kind of sorting? Instead it's 2025 and the solution is to attach an LLM slot machine to the front and drive engagement. I'd be very open to any Firefox extension suggestions (or standalone applications that can consume a Firefox history) that makes it more searchable. I don't often need to search my browser history, but when I do the answer is rarely easy to find. All of the other features look like a high potential for abuse, but with lots of glitz to make it seem essential to laymen.
- bananaflag 1y ago
  The Firefox Awesome Bar, since spring of 2008, has been quite better than anything else, you could search any fragment of the page title and the results showed up by frecency. Curiously, Chrome's omnibox came out later that year and is still worse.
  - rdsubhas 1y ago
    There were many discussions about this in HN too, and the general conclusion was Google wanted to force more Google searches, and the large general users of Chrome were fine with it.
- kristopolous 1y ago
  or when you go to chrome's history and it just lists the title of the page followed by simply the domain. It's like "some designer thought the pages feng shui wasn't in alignment and now the useful stuff is gone." I have to assume they just hire artists that have never used a computer to make UX decisions and act as product dictators. It's either that or empiricism by idiots: "We made the feature take 5x more time to use and got a 5x increase in engagement! Won't my boss be proud!?"
- smilliken 1y ago
  https://histre.com https://histre.com does full text search on browser history
cryptozeus 1y ago
Why as user I should get excited for ai features? Why are they selling ai so much, show me what it solves ? Nothing
derefr 1y ago
> Gemini in Chrome can now work across multiple tabs, so you can quickly compare and summarize information across multiple websites to find what you need. I noticed the other day that my own Chrome browser had begun doing something almost-but-not-quite like this, specifically in the context of browser-chrome-level search autocomplete. Typing in the omnibar now seems to offer completion suggestions based on (seemingly) 1. feeding a fulltext extract of all my open tabs into a RAG; 2. doing a search of that RAG using the completion prefix as the query; and then 3. feeding the matched text-chunks to a local (Gemini Nano?) auto-completion suggestion model. So if I have a tab open somewhere talking about e.g. what type of plants would grow well on a north-facing balcony in Vancouver, and then open a new tab and type "trellace " into the omnibox — then it'll suggest completions seemingly coming specifically from "ideas" it got by reading that open tab. Close the other tab, and those suggestions disappear. (This might just be an experiment that was pushed to me, though I couldn't find anything specifically referencing it in chrome://flags.)
urbandw311er 1y ago
I would sooner stick pins in my eyes than trust Google with unfettered read access to my browser tabs.
jerrygoyal 1y ago
if anyone wants a lightweight alternative I built an AI chrome extension (<1MB) that helps you fix grammar and improve writing wherever you write, draft emails on Gmail, reply to messages on LinkedIn etc. All SOTA models are supported and you can use your own API key :) https://jetwriter.ai https://jetwriter.ai
- Citizen_Lame 1y ago
  You should try using it yourself, instead of spamming.
penguin_booze 1y ago
There's no better time to switch to Firefox: http://getfirefox.com/ http://getfirefox.com/. Until FF pulls a dick move, at which point we sell all our possessions and go live in the mountains.
bicepjai 1y ago
>>> And when it comes to a compromised password, Chrome warns me that my password got hacked and offers to change it for me. All I have to do is click once and that's it. I'm done Do you folks hear yourself ? You want to change my password without me involving it other than clicking ?
tills13 1y ago
I cannot stress how much I don't want this.
tim333 1y ago
The compromised password thing sounds quite handy for me. According to Google's password manager I have 139 compromised passwords and 357 reused passwords. They are mostly junk sites like commenting on the Croydon Advertiser or some such but even so being able to update them with one click would be nice.

[dead]

Another showcase of Google using their dominant market position for Chrome to gain advantage in other markets, like AI agents.

m4r71n 1y ago
I tend to agree. If this was built as a true browser enhancement, it would allow you to select the model of your choice or even plug it into a locally running LLM. This being exclusive to Gemini just juices up their usage numbers to make their investments more justifiable. I wonder if Firefox will ever introduce any similar features.
- rambojohnson 1y ago
  > I wonder if Firefox will ever introduce any similar features. I hope they never do. Nobody’s asking to have AI shoved down their throats, spying on them and profiling everything they do.
- pogue 1y ago
  Firefox does have that and you can choose from different models or even a local one (last time I checked)! https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot
  - glenstein 1y ago
    Is it integrated into the browser at all or is it basically a browser tab?
  - m4r71n 1y ago
    Not quite the same thing. Google's features seem to give the model the ability to control the browser, not just act upon the text within a given web page.
pogue 1y ago
If only there was some law that prohibited monopolistic practices like these that could prevent or stop something like that from happening that could be enforced by a branch of the government... *sigh* just a utopian pipe dream, I suppose

jari_mustonen 1y ago

So they integrate Gemini to summarize open web pages and consolidate all your open tabs into summaries. (Open lot's of pages, then summarize them all.) You can search your history with natural language and type Gemini queries directly into the address bar. This will give them a cognitive profile of you: reading comprehension, decision-making patterns, knowledge gaps, etc. Scary.

vorticalbox 1y ago
Stack that with how you write (drive, emails, everything you post on the internet) to gain a writing fingerprint too. I can imagine a bad actor getting hold of this putting it into a LLM given all this how would I manipulate this person to do x,y,z.

croes 1y ago

Does Google provide a version without AI? For people who don’t want AI in their browser.

pogue 1y ago

This sounds an awful lot like Microsoft's Recall, only implemented in the browser. Granted, there have been a lot of times I have trouble finding a website in my history, open tabs or even bookmarks, so I could potentially see how that might be advantageous as long as I was in a situation where I had a second browser for "non-work" related tasks, or this was strictly prohibited in in-private mode. >4. Find webpages you previously visited >For those frustrating instances when you want to jump back into a past project but don’t want to scroll through your history to find an important website you previously visited, soon you’ll be able to use Gemini in Chrome to recall it for you. Once launched, you can try prompts like “what was the website that I saw the walnut desk on last week?” or “what was that blog I read on back to school shopping?” As for their "agentic browsing assistant", I don't have much trouble adding stuff to my shopping cart or other minor tasks. I'm still waiting on that 'Google Duplex' [1] feature they announced years ago that claimed Google would make phone calls for me to make appointments and etc. Make a doctor's appointment? Dispute a charge on my bill? That's what I want. [1] https://youtu.be/D5VN56jQMWM https://youtu.be/D5VN56jQMWM

Scene_Cast2 1y ago
I find that Chrome has a fairly crippled history by default (worse than any other browser I've ever used). It's so bad that I ended up installing a history extension. Works much better.
- pogue 1y ago
  Which one? I mostly have trouble keeping too many browser tabs open on mobile. Granted, I use Brave & it now organizes closed tabs. On desktop, it has a similar Ai feature for tab management to the one Google described, but it's still not great. I'd honestly appreciate some kind of AI tab management, history/bookmarks saving, summarizing & organizing that would put my old tabs to some kind of reading list that would remind me what I never closed down the line, archive the links I visited & my bookmarks incase of linkrot they would still be saved. Make sure if I was writing a comment on Reddit or similar site, saved it as a draft, etc, etc. That kind of "Smart" browser management system, that I could preferably run myself or had some privacy guarantees (for whatever they're worth) would definitely something I'd consider paying for.

thw_9a83c 1y ago

Sometimes I wish companies would stop forcing AI features down our throats and putting them just everywhere. At least I hope I can properly disable all of this. I don't need an AI agent scanning everything behind my back.

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
Just use chromium
- fsflover 1y ago
  Or, better, Firefox.
  - abdullahkhalids 1y ago
    Firefox has had AI chatbot integration in its sidebar since 133 [1] (Currently we are on 143). Fortunately, you have to sign in manually into the relevant service. I haven't tried it so don't know what happens next. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-chatbot
    - collinfunk 1y ago
      You can also hide it in the sidebar. I did that and forgot it existed for the most part.
  - braebo 1y ago
    Or better yet, Brave!
    - fsflover 1y ago
      Which relies on Google-controlled codebase?
Nzen 1y ago
It looks like [0] access to gemini will only be for subscribers, given that it costs them money. This is, "of course", distinct from ai mode [1] in google search that happens from the address bar in chrome. The first video implies that the difference involves throwing the current web page into the query as context so someone can ask "is this recipe gluten-free?" on a recipe webpage. [0] https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-app-updates-io-2025/#chrome https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-app-updates-io-20... [1] https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-update/#ai-mode-search https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-up...

keyboardJones 1y ago

Very interested to see how well the agentic features work compared to ChatGPT’s cloud version. At the very least, I imagine bot detection/prevention (I.e., CAPTCHA) will be less of issue with Google’s strategy since the browser’s fingerprint will differ Chrome user to Chrome user.

iruoy 1y ago

Funny how this announcement comes days after Google learned that it didn't need to sell Chrome

reclusive-sky 1y ago

Some of these features would be nice to have, but I'm not sure I even want my browser to have these capabilities unless there is a mechanism to keep it all local. This is a monumental change to the amount of user data Google can collect via Chrome.

thw_9a83c 1y ago
> ...unless there is a mechanism to keep it all local I'm not sure the Google is a trustworthy party [0] to believe when they give you some hard-to-find option to keep data local and not use it for user profiling and ad targeting. Google is essentially a data mining business. Some opportunities are simply hard for them to resist. [0]: <https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/google-sued-for-tracking-consumers-after-they-opted-out-a2966481024/ https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/google-s...>

ruralfam 1y ago

Not a comment re: AI in Chrome. I did click into the video to hopefully get an understanding of the features,. but sadly did not. Sorta got an idea, but the jump cuts, super-quick overviews, trying to identify everyone speaking, etc. E.g. ...something about tabs... ...used to take 20 minutes, now seconds... ...working with OTHER Google products (WTH)... Hey Google, make a simpler, more accessible video that is "just the facts mam". Dozens of jump cuts in a few minutes is disconcerting, and may prove dangerous to some.

ActionHank 1y ago

This will surely bring the users back after killing adblockers /s

deckar01 1y ago
The AI mode does seem to be free of ads. The grocery shopping use case seems ridiculous, yet is telling. What kind of compensation might they get for agents putting promoted products in your cart?
- cwillu 1y ago
  ..for now. Just like last time.

akomtu 1y ago

More AI spyware running on user devices?

dmix 1y ago
They dont need LLMs to spy on you. Their ad network and google analytics is already everywhere on the internet and mobile.
- akomtu 1y ago
  Nearly half of their users use ad blockers. The AI spyware, on the other hand, bypasses ad blockers and can answer questions like "what was the user up to on Sep 18?" These short summaries will be carefully kept in database, and in a few years Google will have a nearly perfect cognitive model of all their users. The value of such data is hard to measure. Every big advertiser or a tyrant would sell their soul to understand how to manipulate their populace better. You can't have this with today's ad networks.

HardCodedBias 1y ago

Seems reasonable TBH. I don't know the future of browsers given the trends in AI, but it seems fine to add an opt in ability to browsers to allow an LLM to access the current (or a set) of tabs. If it works it would reduce the amount of copy-paste, which seems like a good thing. It's hardly a killer feature. I'm still going to use chatgpt (and gemini) a tremendous amount.

xg15 1y ago

When the webpage AI argues with the browser AI, which argues with the OS AI which argues with the on-chip mainboard, CPU and GPU AIs, while the monitor AIs frantically try to make notes and the smarthome AI watches all of it and can only shake its metaphorical head.

gl-prod 1y ago

Oh, look a wild Microsoft Recall appears, sure I want the AI to know my browser history and what I do on the web

bapak 1y ago

Are you kidding me!? We are living in the future and the first thing we (have to) worry about is that something will be used against us. I really want the 2008 Google where everything they made was welcomed and not hated on sight. Agentic browser? This. is. what. I. want. Asking the browser about "that specific thing I might have seen last week?" Sign me the f up! I'm not being sarcastic, I really wish I could have all of this and not having to worry about antagonistic companies and governments.

thehamkercat 1y ago
are you sure that you're not being sarcastic?
- bapak 1y ago
  It seems you failed to read my comment. You don't want your computer to help you with your daily tasks?

andrei_says_ 1y ago

How does one disable this feature?

christophilus 1y ago
By installing LibreWolf.
rogerbinns 1y ago
Apparently using Linux does the trick too. I have no idea what technical limitation exists to prevent the code from working on Linux.
zamadatix 1y ago
Settings -> AI Innovations There are several toggles there. I also had to click an agree button the first time I used it.

liquid_thyme 1y ago

A lot of these new AI features can be helpful as long as the users' control the data. Is there an alternate world where Google might become the good guy here? In this world, as might be expected, the company making the worlds best spyware, wants to expand its spying.

lawlessone 1y ago

>Combat more sophisticated scams with Gemini Nano Fantastic, Googles AI will be fighting to stop the scams Googles advertising promotes to me...

dmix 1y ago

That agentic stuff is going to be a big deal. Probably the most interesting part of LLMs besides coding. Assuming it works well

jstummbillig 1y ago
The interesting part about this variant is, that it's actually happening in my browser. I can't see how else this is going to happen, for various real world reasons. This feels actually tangible and potentially useful. With ChatGPT I am just confused about when/why I would press "Agent".

cons0le 1y ago

I don't want any of this crap. We need to push for the right to opt out of AI features. All of this garbage should be opt in.

salomonk_mur 1y ago
You don't want automatic browsing of tedious tasks? I really do.
- brazukadev 1y ago
  like what, reading & commenting on HN?
- robofanatic 1y ago
  I certainly don’t want AI to buy groceries for me while I’m “busy” doing something else.
  - smileysteve 1y ago
    It's like using Alexa to shop, or when an Amazon ad comes on it and saves to the cart, only your order has a delivery cost and it's perishable
    - reaperducer 1y ago
      Reminds me of the one-button Amazon magnets that you'd stick to the refrigerator. Press the "Gatorade" button, and Gatorade shows up at the front door the next day. Except that it might cost you $2.49, or it might cost $12.88. There was no way of knowing beforehand. (Those things were awesome tech, BTW. You'd program it with your phone via the equivalent of an acoustic modem.)
  - adrianmonk 1y ago
    I wouldn't mind help with grocery orders. I like to check which apples are on special and maybe buy a different variety from normal depending on the price. My grocery store makes this really tedious because they don't have a feature to sort by price per pound. So I have a stupid ritual where I ctrl-F "($0." and repeatedly ctrl-G to see all the apples under $1/pound. Then I do it again with ctrl-F "($1." to see the ones in the $1-$2/pound price range. And there are several other products with similar annoying processes. If an AI could just do that for me, it would save me time. I don't actually think present-day AI would do it reliably enough, but the concept sounds fine.

kixiQu 1y ago

Can I block it as a site host? (Please don't respond about how I shouldn't want to and isn't it just like some other usecase that I'd obviously want not to block)

zamadatix 1y ago
I think that depends on what you mean by "block it as a site host".
- kixiQu 1y ago
  > You can now ask questions about the entire page you’re on right from the omnibox. Chrome can suggest relevant questions based on the context of the page to help you kickstart your search. You'll get a helpful AI Overview from Search right alongside the page, with the ability to ask follow-up questions in AI Mode, so you can get helpful information without leaving the page. I've done the normal things to exclude my site from search. I would like this to not run on my site either.

scrollop 1y ago

They're all wearing shades of green.

wrs 1y ago

It is astonishing that the word “privacy” appears zero times in this announcement. There have been repeated controversies over exactly how Google sees just the URL I visit. Now they want to see the entire contents of multiple browser tabs?

janalsncm 1y ago
You are right about the omnibox changes. But the security enhancements appear to be using Gemini nano which can run on device. They kind of buried that detail though. https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/gemini-nano-offline/ https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/gemini-nano-...
- simonw 1y ago
  Yikes! Given the inherent threat of prompt injection, using the weakest available version of Gemini seems like a particularly bad idea. Not that even the strongest models are 100% effective at spotting prompt injection attacks, but they have way more of a fighting chance than Gemini nano does.
  - tadfisher 1y ago
    You could contort the threat model such that prompt injection is something to worry about with a local model operating on local data and serving local results, sure.
    - BryantD 1y ago
      I think the "local results" assumption is not completely accurate. This line: "You tell Gemini in Chrome what you want to get done, and it acts on web pages on your behalf, while you focus on other things" implies that the local agent will perform in-browser actions, which in theory enables data exfiltration.
      - tadfisher 1y ago

everdrive 1y ago

Does anyone know if Chromium is spared of these features?

ugh123 1y ago
If built from source, likely yes. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/

ugh123 1y ago

Taking a quick test spin. Seems to be enabled (on mac) by the existing "Gemini in Chrome" extension but requires a Chrome update. Which has a global shortcut (across all mac apps) of "Ctrl+g" (this can be changed). The additional AI features seem to come from the tab content's integration into the Gemini console (previously (I believe) the Gemini extension was merely a thin console to the Gemini service)). The direct tab integration works by first showing the Gemini console (ctrl-g or Gemini icon in the mac system tray) where there is then a 'Share current page' icon below the text view. This adds a blue border around the chrome window indicating the current page can be shared with chrome. It's not clear, but I believe the page content is only shared once a prompt is made intending to use the page's content. However, the share-enablement remains enabled for all tabs (all tab windows will have the blue border) until turned off in the Gemini consol. Again, it's not clear if just merely browsing these tabs will automatically share that content with Google. The Gemini integration does not perform actions (can't ask it to do stuff directly with the site's content (navigate, click buttons, etc). But direct summarization works well (try it on an HN comment page or news article). Overall, I like this feature as long as I understand what and when things are being shared and ability to turn off easily.

the_snooze 1y ago
>It's not clear, but I believe the page content is only shared once a prompt is made intending to use the page's content. If it's only processing page content as the user requests it, then how would feature 4 "Find webpages you previously visited" work? Seems like it would need to process everything in order to enable prompt-based content recall.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  The article seems to say and show that once you prompt it searches your history by page titles and can then dig deeper into the top hits. The permissions in Chrome seem to agree with this: > History search, powered by AI Use everyday language to search your browsing history and find sites you visited. You can also ask questions and get answers based on your browsing history. > When you search browsing history, your history searches, the page content of best matches, and generated model outputs are sent to Google It's also worth noting enabling history awareness is a separate toggle from having Gemini enabled, and it doesn't seem to be able to answer anything about history when I turn it off. Sharing the currently open pages also seems to be a separate permissions toggle from either of these.

M4v3R 1y ago

This seems huge to me. As in: the initial release of Google Chrome huge. I don’t know if they can really pull off things they showed but if they do I’m sure this will be a massive success. Which is pretty sad considering the privacy implications for this. Imagine how much more data they will have on everyone. Scary.

moralestapia 1y ago
>As in: the initial release of Google Chrome huge. Nope, not even 0.01% of that.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

selectnull 1y ago

That reminds me to donate to Ladybird.

simonw 1y ago

Anthropic's "Claude for Chrome" pilot from a few weeks back spent most of the announcement article talking about security and threats from prompt injection: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-chrome https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-chrome This announcement from Chrome themselves hardly mentions that at all.

tadfisher 1y ago
That's because Claude can interact with web pages, potentially exfiltrating data. This Gemini integration apparently cannot.
- simonw 1y ago
  From the linked post: > In the coming months, we’ll be introducing agentic capabilities to Gemini in Chrome. These will let Gemini in Chrome handle those tedious tasks that take up so much of your time, like booking a haircut or ordering your weekly groceries.
  - tadfisher 1y ago
    Then let's put down the megaphone until that announcement?
    - M4v3R 1y ago
      It will be too late when it happens, cat will already be out of the bag.
- azinman2 1y ago
  Isn’t that what they’re promising with the agent?

bflesch 1y ago

I've just hard-pinned chrome v138 so ublock origin keeps working, so happy to hear it is also saving me from the AI features.

zamadatix 1y ago
138 already had AI shovelware in it, but at least you're avoiding more. Btw if you launch with --disablefeatures=ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported,ExtensionManifestV2Disabled you can squeeze a few more versions out https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/2977#discussioncomment-13593599 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/29... as CLI based flags tend to live much longer than the GUI flags.
mh- 1y ago
Any tips on doing this on mac? I googled (ha) for a few minutes but couldn't find a straightforward answer.

shadowgovt 1y ago

Honestl, agentic browsing on grocery sites would be pretty great... But mostly because grocery sites have some of the worst UX in existence.

jackdoe 1y ago

I suggest the people working on those features watch Neil Postman's "The Surrender of Culture to Technology": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrv7DIHllE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrv7DIHllE Part of me is actually excited for the acceleration of the end of the web, I even wrote https://punkx.org/jackdoe/zero.txt https://punkx.org/jackdoe/zero.txt few days ago in frustration. The sooner it ends the better. I really don't want to see "summarization" tokens of other people's tokens.

cons0le 1y ago
Great writing, and great website. Text based pages like this are superior in every way for not wasting time

xnx 1y ago

Agentic browsing in Chrome is a really big deal. For the first time in 30 years the "user agent" will really act like one instead of being a mere browser. In 10 years it will be passé to use the web in real time vs. having an agent acting on your behalf and distilling the information you want.

lawlessone 1y ago
exactly, why read books or watch movies when i can just have my personal AI summarize them. This will open up a future of webpages , sites and services exclusively made for our bots to read and transcribe to us.

picardo 1y ago

Last time I checked the context window for the embedded Gemini Nano was 1024 tokens. I hope they have reconsidered that limitation.

etothepii 1y ago

And yet even on the page about Chrome's new AI assistant is a cookie pop-up ...

jimjimjim 1y ago

Well, this sounds terrible. Asking the AI "what was the site where i saw a walnut desk" would mean that enough data has to be stored (locally but how long until there is a pro version where it stored and processed centrally). Isn't that data storage a security nightmare?

neves 1y ago

My favorite Gemini feature is pasting an url with cultural events and say: add these events to my calendar. Also works with images

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

Calling it now, these features wont work with an adblocker enabled within 6 months. Not that I asked for any of this anyway.

andrew_eu 1y ago

I've used probably 15 or 20 web browsers in my lifetime and all of them had the same barely searchable table of URLs as their only history view. Why couldn't we have full text search of the pages, or a view that reflects tab histories as some kind of graph, or UIs that support any kind of sorting? Instead it's 2025 and the solution is to attach an LLM slot machine to the front and drive engagement. I'd be very open to any Firefox extension suggestions (or standalone applications that can consume a Firefox history) that makes it more searchable. I don't often need to search my browser history, but when I do the answer is rarely easy to find. All of the other features look like a high potential for abuse, but with lots of glitz to make it seem essential to laymen.

bananaflag 1y ago
The Firefox Awesome Bar, since spring of 2008, has been quite better than anything else, you could search any fragment of the page title and the results showed up by frecency. Curiously, Chrome's omnibox came out later that year and is still worse.
- rdsubhas 1y ago
  There were many discussions about this in HN too, and the general conclusion was Google wanted to force more Google searches, and the large general users of Chrome were fine with it.
kristopolous 1y ago
or when you go to chrome's history and it just lists the title of the page followed by simply the domain. It's like "some designer thought the pages feng shui wasn't in alignment and now the useful stuff is gone." I have to assume they just hire artists that have never used a computer to make UX decisions and act as product dictators. It's either that or empiricism by idiots: "We made the feature take 5x more time to use and got a 5x increase in engagement! Won't my boss be proud!?"
smilliken 1y ago
https://histre.com https://histre.com does full text search on browser history

cryptozeus 1y ago

Why as user I should get excited for ai features? Why are they selling ai so much, show me what it solves ? Nothing

derefr 1y ago

> Gemini in Chrome can now work across multiple tabs, so you can quickly compare and summarize information across multiple websites to find what you need. I noticed the other day that my own Chrome browser had begun doing something almost-but-not-quite like this, specifically in the context of browser-chrome-level search autocomplete. Typing in the omnibar now seems to offer completion suggestions based on (seemingly) 1. feeding a fulltext extract of all my open tabs into a RAG; 2. doing a search of that RAG using the completion prefix as the query; and then 3. feeding the matched text-chunks to a local (Gemini Nano?) auto-completion suggestion model. So if I have a tab open somewhere talking about e.g. what type of plants would grow well on a north-facing balcony in Vancouver, and then open a new tab and type "trellace " into the omnibox — then it'll suggest completions seemingly coming specifically from "ideas" it got by reading that open tab. Close the other tab, and those suggestions disappear. (This might just be an experiment that was pushed to me, though I couldn't find anything specifically referencing it in chrome://flags.)

urbandw311er 1y ago

I would sooner stick pins in my eyes than trust Google with unfettered read access to my browser tabs.

jerrygoyal 1y ago

if anyone wants a lightweight alternative I built an AI chrome extension (<1MB) that helps you fix grammar and improve writing wherever you write, draft emails on Gmail, reply to messages on LinkedIn etc. All SOTA models are supported and you can use your own API key :) https://jetwriter.ai https://jetwriter.ai

Citizen_Lame 1y ago
You should try using it yourself, instead of spamming.

penguin_booze 1y ago

There's no better time to switch to Firefox: http://getfirefox.com/ http://getfirefox.com/. Until FF pulls a dick move, at which point we sell all our possessions and go live in the mountains.

bicepjai 1y ago

>>> And when it comes to a compromised password, Chrome warns me that my password got hacked and offers to change it for me. All I have to do is click once and that's it. I'm done Do you folks hear yourself ? You want to change my password without me involving it other than clicking ?

tills13 1y ago

I cannot stress how much I don't want this.

tim333 1y ago

The compromised password thing sounds quite handy for me. According to Google's password manager I have 139 compromised passwords and 357 reused passwords. They are mostly junk sites like commenting on the Croydon Advertiser or some such but even so being able to update them with one click would be nice.