Google is adding multiple new AI features to Chrome, the most popular browser in the world. The most visible change is a new button in Chrome that launches the Gemini chatbot, but there are also new tools for searching, researching, and answering questions with AI. Google has additional cursor-controlling “agentic” tools in the pipeline for Chrome as well.
The Gemini in Chrome mode for the web browser uses generative AI to answer questions about content on a page and synthesize information across multiple open tabs. Gemini in Chrome first rolled out to Google’s paying subscribers in May. The AI-focused features are now available to all desktop users in the US browsing in English; they’ll show up in a browser update.
On mobile devices, Android users can already use aspects of Gemini within the Chrome app, and Google is expected to launch an update for iOS users of Chrome in the near future.
When I wrote about web browsers starting to add more generative AI tools back in 2023, it was primarily something that served as an alternative to the norm. The software was built by misfits and change-makers who were experimenting with new tools, or hunting for a break-out feature to grow their small user bases. All of this activity was dwarfed by the commanding number of users who preferred Chrome.
Two years later, while Google’s browser remains the market leader, the internet overall is completely seeped in AI tools, many of them also made by Google. Still, today marks the moment when the concept of an “AI browser” truly went mainstream with the weaving of Gemini so closely into the Chrome browser.
The Gemini strategy at Google has already been to leverage as many of its in-house integrations as possible, from Gmail to Google Docs. So, the decision to AI-ify the Chrome browser for a wider set of users does not come as a shock.
Even so, the larger roll out will likely be met with ire by some users who are either exhausted by the onslaught of AI-focused features in 2025 or want to abstain from using generative AI, whether for environmental reasons or because they don’t want their activity to be used to train an algorithm. Users who don’t want to see the Gemini option will be able to click on the Gemini sparkle icon and unpin it from the top right corner of the Chrome browser.
