🔗 Daring Fireball: Google Chrome Adds AI-Generated Store Summaries
Now browsers themselves will be adding their own layers of distracting cruft atop the websites. The entire premise of Chrome — the reason for its name — is that it was originally designed to simplify the UI of the browser app itself, the “chrome”, at a time when Internet Explorer and even Firefox were increasingly cluttered and confusing.
I’m confused as to why Google and all these AI companies are so gun-ho about adding AI agents to browsers. What do they get out of this deal? Is it just a way for them to win users and get data from their browsing habits? Is it protection against Google potentially dissuading these users away from using their chat-bots? These are not problems Google has, so why are they doing this?
They seem like features designed to turn the dial up on Google’s slice of commissions from web transactions.
Maybe, but how can they collect? If they run AI over the web-pages that a user visits, when the user converts, how are they going to tell the website owner that they help “bring in the eye-balls” thanks to AI and have earned X% off the top? Maybe they’ll only run these AI agents on sites that “opt-in” in some way, either by using Google Pay or paying more for Google ads. I can see that happening.
All very strange. In either case, I’m glad I’m rocking Vivaldi these days.