Saurabh Singh
For the better part of a decade, Google Chrome has dominated the web browser market. Whether it be use cases or conversations around them, not to mention the countless memes that have followed, Chrome is part of internet culture. Not that there has not been any competition. Rather, there's been tons of it. But everyone, from Microsoft Edge to Opera and others, has largely lived and worked around its influence – never outright beating Google at its game. Something that has forced many to sue Google, time and time again, with the jury still out on whether to call it a monopoly or not. If that wasn't enough, some have even offered to buy Chrome. In other words, Google Chrome is a big deal, and you better believe it.
However, the rapid rise of generative AI has disrupted this status quo. Or at least that's the impression you get when hearing some of the conversations that have been going on off late. At the centre of most of these conversations are two companies – relatively new compared to Google – OpenAI and Perplexity. OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, have launched Atlas while Perplexity, with Indian-origin CEO Aravind Srinivas at the helm, has come up with Comet. Both are standalone browsers built to challenge Chrome's dominance and redefine the way users interact with the web. This they are doing, by literally flipping the script that web browsers have been following since the dawn of time. It's a massive change, in a way, marking a make-or-break moment for search and the internet.
What makes this new browser war notable is its fundamentally different focus. Instead of speed or extensions, the competition now centres on smarter, AI-powered co-pilots for navigating daily online life. Both ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet are built on Chromium, the open-source platform that underpins Chrome, meaning Google's own foundation is being used against it. This is something that the internet also reminded the Perplexity CEO when he tweeted, "Internet is too important to be left in Google's hands." Interestingly, Srinivas had also thrown his hat into the ring to acquire Chrome recently. But we digress.
The core idea behind Comet or even Atlas is straightforward: traditional browsers are considered outdated, with AI-native browsers aspiring to become active assistants capable of reading, understanding, summarising, and acting on behalf of users.
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