AI Browsers Declare War on Google: OpenAI and Perplexity Enter the Fray

The browser battlefield just got a major AI upgrade. Forget simple search bars—these new contenders are building intelligent agents that understand context, anticipate needs, and deliver answers without the endless scrolling.

The New Contenders

OpenAI, the name behind ChatGPT, is reportedly developing its own web browser. The move signals a direct challenge to the traditional search-and-click model. Meanwhile, Perplexity AI has been gaining traction with its answer-engine approach, providing summarized responses with citations, cutting through the noise of conventional search results.

Why This Matters for Tech

This isn't just about a prettier interface. It's a fundamental shift in how we interact with information online. The goal is to move from passive retrieval to active conversation. Users ask; the AI browses, synthesizes, and reports back. It promises efficiency but raises fresh questions about data sourcing, bias, and the very structure of the web.

The Google Question

Can the search giant be dethroned? Google's dominance is built on an unparalleled index and a lucrative advertising ecosystem. AI browsers threaten to bypass that entire page-view economy by delivering answers directly. The response so far? Google's own AI Overviews feature, which feels like a defensive play in a game that's rapidly changing the rules.

Forget 'disruption'—this is a targeted bypass of the entire attention-for-ads model. The real battle isn't for your search query; it's for the trillion-dollar data pipeline behind it. Some VC-funded startup will probably claim it's 'democratizing information' right before trying to tokenize your browsing history.

The bottom line: The browser is being reborn as an AI co-pilot. Whether it leads to a more intelligent web or just a new walled garden of synthesized content depends on who builds it—and what they're really optimizing for.

Browser control offers a path to users and revenue          

AI browser makers face tough competition from Google, which controls more than 63 percent of the global market share, according to Cloudflare, and has quickly incorporated its Gemini AI models into Chrome.

For both OpenAI and Perplexity, creating their own versions will give them a more direct relationship with their users, many of whom access chatbots such as ChatGPT on browsers controlled by Google and Microsoft.

Perplexity’s Jesse Dwyer, who works on its new Comet browser, said the start-up viewed browsers like the “operating system of your mind”.

Some have criticised the new AI-powered browser experience, with users complaining about glitchy and unreliable features. Others have warned about privacy concerns over personal data.

Google said it uses the conversations from Gemini to train its models, but does not harvest web page content from users’ browsers and removes personal information from browsing sessions.

OpenAI said its Atlas browser will follow existing training settings in ChatGPT. If a user chooses to opt in, that data is passed through privacy and safety filters before being used by the start-up.

Microsoft said its AI features are also “opt-in”, while Perplexity said it uses user data to train internal proprietary models that work on processes such as how queries are formulated, as well as to tweak frontier models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to be more accurate.

Google’s lead will be hard to supplant, however. In May, it announced plans to launch “AI mode” in Google search and Chrome browser to provide a conversational, question-and-answer experience akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Its latest LLM Gemini 3, launched in November, is also considered to have leapfrogged OpenAI’s GPT-5 and achieved gains from the model training process that have eluded OpenAI in recent months.

“An AI-enabled browser alone isn’t a differentiator,” said Stephanie Liu, senior analyst at Forrester. “OpenAI will have to find a meaningful value proposition to pull in more users — which, again, is a tall order when they’re facing a very powerful, highly used incumbent web browser.”

Adam Fry, OpenAI’s product lead for ChatGPT Atlas, said the company was working to bring more features, such as multiple profiles and the ability to group tabs, to its browser soon. “This is the start of a long investment we’re making in Atlas,” he said.

A big focus for Google has been developing agents and making capabilities such as translation and auto-filling information into forms much easier. It also launched a new experimental tool called Disco in December, which allows users to turn open tabs into custom, interactive apps.

Security risks emerge as models gain browser access

The integration of AI models into browsers also introduces new cybersecurity risks, such as prompt injection, where attackers can manipulate how LLMs behave by inserting malicious prompts on websites.

Prompt injection attacks are an unsolved security problem and stem from the fact that AI models cannot differentiate between legitimate user requests and malicious ones.

Consultancy Gartner recently suggested that companies block AI browsers over these cybersecurity concerns. These risks are exacerbated as users trust AI models with sensitive information such as credit card details. 

Despite the risks, most experts agree that browsers are ripe for innovation after largely remaining the same over the past two decades.

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