"The early days of the internet saw intense competition between graphical web browsers: Netscape Navigator faced off against Microsoft's Internet Explorer. No sooner had Explorer won that conflict than a new war for marketshare erupted between Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, and Google Chrome. This time Chrome emerged as the dominant player, with a marketshare that has been above 60% for most of the past decade, while the next closest rival, Apple's Safari, has been stuck in the mid-teens."
"But now, AI is shaking up the browser market, with companies beginning to incorporate new generative and agentic AI capabilities directly into the web navigation tool. That in turn is sparking a fierce new war for users, with Google Chrome, now enhanced with Google's AI model Gemini, fighting upstarts like Perplexity, with its Comet AI browser, and battered veterans of past browser fights, like Opera, trying to get their mojo back with AI enhancements too."
"On Tuesday, OpenAI also entered the fray with it's new AI powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas. The new browser looks like a traditional ones such as Google Chrome but puts ChatGPT at the center of the browsing experience and weaves AI into the user experience. OpenAI is also offering a paid agent mode of Atlas that can conduct searches on its own for users."
Early browser competition between Netscape and Internet Explorer gave way to another battle among Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, with Chrome dominating at over 60% market share for most of the past decade while Safari remained in the mid-teens. For nearly two decades the basic browsing model stayed largely unchanged: users entered URLs or search queries into a navigation bar and the browser returned web pages or search result links. Companies are now integrating generative and agentic AI directly into browsers to create experiences that answer questions, perform tasks, and act on users' behalf. Major players include Google with Gemini-enhanced Chrome, Perplexity's Comet AI browser, Opera with AI additions, and OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas offering a ChatGPT-centered interface plus a paid autonomous agent mode. The market is shifting toward browsers as intelligent assistants rather than mere navigational tools.
Read at Fortune
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