In 1993, Mosaic was the first web browser. By 1995, Netscape led the way. After that, Internet Explorer took the lead and appeared unstoppable. Then, in 2008, Firefox emerged. But they were left in the dust by Google’s Chrome in 2012. Today, Chrome commands a 67 percent market share as of January 2025.
Change may be coming again. Artificial intelligence companies are starting to focus on the web, which could herald a paradigm shift.
On Monday, Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, announced plans to launch its own web browser called Comet. In a post on X, the company said the browser was “coming soon” and invited people to sign up for a waitlist. Perplexity also did not offer details on what would make the browser unique.
Perplexity has been growing fast. Last October, CEO Aravind Srinivas announced on X that the search engine was serving 100 million queries per week. And in December, the company closed a $500 million funding round, taking its valuation to $9 billion.
Perplexity isn’t the only AI company looking at the browser market. Last November, OpenAI was reported to be working on its own AI-infused web browser. That came roughly a month after the ChatGPT maker integrated web search into its popular chatbot, keeping users inside the app.
The ChatGPT web-search integration wasn’t perfect and, at the moment, falls short of the definition of a browser, but it was good enough to hook Inc. tech columnist Jason Aten, who wrote “for most of the things I’ve searched for this past week, ChatGPT has been a superior experience.”
Google is not surrendering without a fight. Chrome is an important part of its business these days. Last September, Google very quietly added its Gemini AI into Chrome, letting users access it by typing @gemini in the browser’s query bar before their chatbot question. Soon, it says, users will be able to compare information across multiple tabs with an AI-generated overview.
This could be an ideal opportunity for startups to challenge Google’s browser market dominance, as the company is dealing with other hurdles. Google is awaiting sentencing, expected by August, after it received a guilty verdict in a search monopoly suit. The Department of Justice has announced its hope to break up the company, forcing Alphabet to sell Chrome. A second case, meanwhile, regarding Alphabet’s advertising technology, is awaiting a verdict. China has also launched its own antitrust investigation into Google, in response to tariffs.
