I’ve long been wondering what’s going on with all these new browsers, and whether we’ll need to install a new browser for each search app or chatbot that we want to use. Already I have apps on my phone for Quant, Kagi and Mistral, as well as Firefox and Chrome browsers (it’s an Android) - and these browsers, like those from Ecosia, Duck Duck Go, Ad Block Plus and all - don’t feel like browsers at all: to me, it’s all going against the grain of the original web. Casey Newton (@caseynewton@mastodon.social) just dropped a post, full of great links to explore further - The AI browser wars are about to begin - on this very topic.
On a minor note, first; I do take issue with Newton’s oversimple assertion that Opera is a Norwegian browser - it was bought out in 2016 by a Chinese tech consortium including, according to the Battle of the Browsers website
… gaming firm Beijing Kunlun Tech, cybersecurity specialist Qihoo 360 Technology, Golden Brick Silk Road Equity Investment Fund, and Yonglian Investment.
Indeed, I swiftly stopped using Opera due to my concerns with the Chinese takeover and eventually ended up bouncing between Vivaldi and Firefox, all the while remaining (too) open to trying other browsers like Arc (for a while), Zen and now Kagi’s Orion, which is of the class of browser that I’m now concerned with here.
There are browsers of all styles available on Android, but the main theme here is that they aren’t browsers in the traditional sense, but portals to the companies' own AI systems, ready to search, browse and act for you. As Newton implies, it still feels rather unsettling:
The entire structure of the web — from journalism to e-commerce and beyond — is built on the idea that webpages are being viewed by people. When it’s mostly code that is doing the looking, a lot of basic assumptions are going to get broken. … To the browser warriors suiting up for battle, that looks like an exciting opportunity. To everyone else, though, it still feels mostly like a problem.
I’ve yet to really dive deep into AI tools (I still prefer to write my own text) beyond DeepL’s translation assistant, but it feels as if we’re in a strange moment, where I’ll be part of the previous generation and the next or next-but-one will be acting upon acts performed on their behalves - if it all pans out as these companies imagine.
