Look, Another AI Browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#71

Post by Renaud » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:21 PM UTC

deepanwadhwa wrote: post #13

umm, I am not a fan of any of the recent new browsers but what's wrong with Chromium in itself? I think Chromium is pretty good, technologically mature, foss.

Chromium is highly dependent on Google’s interests. We see how they chose to implement Manifest V3 in a way that, through a strange coincidence(/s), neuters the capabilities of Ad Blocking extensions.

All downstream browsers are affected by Google’s bottom line. Putting lipstick and a few nice features on top of an engine that you don’t control doesn’t make your browser a true alternative from Google’s.

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#72

Post by MYEUHD » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:21 PM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #56

mathieudombrock wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google has proven with their recent actions concerning android that they really can't be trusted with big, critical open source projects.

The Play Store services are not a critical open source project, though. The AOSP is still intact and maintained in accordance with the licensing. The application signing backtrack is an issue, but more of a political problem than a technical one. America's lesson here has been written on the wall for years: regulate your tech businesses, or your tech businesses will regulate you.

Where is the source code for AOSP 16 QPR1?

Where are the security patches of the past couple of months?

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#73

Post by sikimiki » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

aabhay wrote: post #16

codeflo wrote: post #11

To find out what someone truly believes, don't listen to what they say, observe how they act. I don't see how OpenAI's recent actions make any sense from the perspective a company that internally believes it's actually close to unlocking super-intelligence.

OpenAI has always had the stance of “commercialize narrow AI that is research aligned with AGI development”. In fact they used to ask this as an interview question — “should we commercialize narrow AI or aim to put all resources into AGI”. The correct answer required you to prove you drank the kool aid and also wanted to make tons of money.

Is there a correct answer?

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#74

Post by labrador » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #61

labrador wrote: post #50

> Yesterday, OpenAI announced Atlas, its AI browser. To the surprise of literally nobody, it’s Chromium with AI slapped on top. Perplexity also has a browser: it’s called Comet, and it also is Chromium with AI slapped on top. Then we have DIA, which is, you guessed it, Chromium with AI slapped on top. I think Opera also has one of those Chromium browsers with AI slapped on top. The interesting thing is what they "sla…

Building on top of a bunch of things works well, and is pretty much what Chromium itself is anyways. Building something "new" that is 99% the old thing so you can add your 1% is a different kind of building, and can't be lumped with the former by default. More powerful extensions is definitely the answer, just not one Google wants to allow. The main problem with this is if browser A adds feature 1 and browser B adds…

I've been very impressed by the open source Ladybird project for several years now. I wasn't up to date and didn't realize it had 8 full time engineers working on it now with project leader Andreas Kling. This is truely more promising than "slapping things on Chromium" and competing with Google Chrome.

I didn't explicity state but was implying that a new plug in archeticture to the open source Chromium project might be an interesting way to add AI features in a more democratic fashion.

Either path still has to compete with what Google does with proprietary extensions to Chrome.

Edit to be clear: Since Chromium is open source, the community could actually collaborate on adding a shared AI plugin architecture to the core project rather than making competing forks. That would solve the fragmentation problem entirely.

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#75

Post by btown » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:25 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #32

btown wrote: post #5

To be sure, a browser that retains a representation of every word you read on it, constantly synthesizing a profile on your preferences, using that profile to filter everything you see through a lens that consistently enforces and limits the worldview of a snapshot-of-you - all with a level of data retention that would be controversial for Google but that OpenAI's users will happily opt into, that Palantir and its go…

Another possible aspect of it is that probably more and more sites are blocking AI crawlers through e.g. Cloudflare's support for blocking AI crawler and AI agents. This will give them a backdoor to that content through a user's connection. I am not sure if this is happening, but as blocking becomes more prevalent, having a widely-used browser will help.

I can just see the news story now:

"Oops, we got caught using our customers' internet connections as exit nodes for the largest residential proxy ever to exist, both on pages they visited and ones that they didn't. But don't worry, this was an unauthorized experimental rollout to only parts of the world that we don't have legal nexus in. The program has been halted, and the person responsible has been sacked. Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti..."

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#76

Post by nikolay » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:32 PM UTC

These all envy Edge and Chrome for having nice AI integration built-in. But the last thing we need is a bunch of "new" browsers!

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#77

Post by throwacct » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:41 PM UTC

Nah.. I'm good. I use brave for daily use and that's it. My family uses safari by default and won't switch over since they're not tech savvy.

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#78

Post by everdrive » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:44 PM UTC

btown wrote: post #5

To be sure, a browser that retains a representation of every word you read on it, constantly synthesizing a profile on your preferences, using that profile to filter everything you see through a lens that consistently enforces and limits the worldview of a snapshot-of-you - all with a level of data retention that would be controversial for Google but that OpenAI's users will happily opt into, that Palantir and its go…

If such a browser was unavoidable I'd just drop off the web and read books. They can only turn the screws so much.

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#79

Post by spwa4 » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:49 PM UTC

The point of why "it's so special" is that:

1) a browser contains all the information marketing firms and companies kill for. The buying habits of billions of people, hell it contains more than that: it contains all sorts of data about what exactly makes people buy.

2) OpenAI's browser generates excitement and might actually make this information available for OpenAI to sell

3) This would be a totally new revenue stream for OpenAI, maybe a dozen new revenue streams

Re: Look, Another AI Browser

#80

Post by encom » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:50 PM UTC

labrador wrote: post #50

> Yesterday, OpenAI announced Atlas, its AI browser. To the surprise of literally nobody, it’s Chromium with AI slapped on top. Perplexity also has a browser: it’s called Comet, and it also is Chromium with AI slapped on top. Then we have DIA, which is, you guessed it, Chromium with AI slapped on top. I think Opera also has one of those Chromium browsers with AI slapped on top. The interesting thing is what they "sla…

>Chromium is an industry wide[...]

But is it though? Feels to me like Google just does whatever it wants. Nobody except Google wants manifest v3. Nobody wants "Web Environment Integrity", etc.