OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome
47 comments
·July 12, 2025perihelions
pzo
I think native browser can provide better integration than browser extensions. Things like: mcp, access to accessibility, playwright, browser use, stagehand - this should help make a better operator.
bradleyjg
Strange how in the end KDE Konqueror beat out Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. No one would have believed it.
danielbln
The name was prescient. It conquered alright.
msgodel
I was actually running Konqueror as my primary browser before Chrome was released. It was really great at the time, way faster than Firefox.
conartist6
Why do these idiot companies keep tackling real technical challenges that they don't want.
Open AI doesn't want to own and maintain a browser for the next 20 years! They'll give up in like two years when they realize it's actually quite hard and they have no particular committment to it
rvnx
Not really if you are a Chromium fork. Difficult from ground-up but from Chromium it’s rather easy. Way easier than creating an LLM. Even easier when you can hire the Chromium developers.
conartist6
You clearly think how they think. It's just so EASY to do. Practically done already. With an attitude like that how could they not succeed in tackling a really, really hard problem that requires nearly endless thankless investment?
khurs
He is talking common sense. Releasing a web browser on top of an existing one like Chromium is not rocket science.
I would urge you to reflect on your atitude. As the majority 'thinks how they think'. As we are right.
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rvnx
Investors at Perplexity are now crying. Company is dead, killed by its supplier, like Cursor
throwoutway
Or this isn't real and is just a scare tactic
CuriouslyC
At first I thought this was funny, but truthfully I don't love my browser. Brave and Firefox are both mildly annoying in different ways.
I'll probably give it a spin when they release it. It's just a Chromium fork and they can afford to make it good, if the AI integration is subtle and actually useful and there are robust controls on how my data is used (and it supports high quality adblock), I could see myself using it regularly.
noname120
Why not acquire Dia from The Browser Company?
dude250711
It would be a shame if YouTube/Maps/Google/etc. suddenly would not work properly or fast on this browser...
rvnx
They will work, in order to increase retention, just that Google will have to pay billions to be default search engine instead of OpenAI
carlosjobim
No problem for smart phone users, they install the apps for these services.
zer00eyz
> The browser’s access to a user’s web activity would make it the ideal platform for AI “agents” that can take actions on their behalf, like booking reservations or filling out forms, directly within the websites they use.
How about agents canceling services I no longer want? Or agents figuring out what choices I have to make to get my return picked up rather than have to take it to a drop off or pay?
There was the open web, with lots of rich api's... All of that got killed for the sake of profit and market consolidation. Are those same players going to be tolerant of agents cutting into their bottom line, of agents that cant be upsold, that dont misclick?
IF we ever get a solid agenic tooling I suspect that it will be murdered in its crib by industry.
coffeebeqn
I’m assuming this is some kind of a layer on top of chromium?
ethan_smith
Almost certainly a Chromium fork rather than just a layer, similar to how Edge, Brave and Arc are built. This gives them full control over the rendering engine and browser internals while leveraging Chromium's compatibility.
conartist6
It also gives them huge ongoing costs which few engineers in the world know how to pay.
Every line of code costs something to own. Forking a few million lines is free now, but the more time passes the more you will pay to own those lines.
WJW
It literally says that in TFA.
bentt
This would make giving them all my data so much easier for them. That is the endgame, right? OpenAI becomes the advertiser of record using the best, richest, most targeted data ever. And we gave it all to them. “Dumb Fucks” -Zuck
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MeteorMarc
Will it be possible to disable the AI in their browser?
Seems they just want your personal browsing history for training, and built this Chromium reskin to get around privacy controls.
> "OpenAI decided to build its own browser, rather than simply a "plug-in" on top of another company's browser, in order to have more control over the data it can collect, one source said."