OpenAI wants to enter the browser war

A browser in which an AI chatbot and an AI search are already integrated – OpenAI is apparently working on this. The AI provider is said to have spoken to various potential customers about this. The aim was apparently to make the new search function, which would benefit from the company's own browser, appealing to them.

The Information magazine reports that employees from the publisher Condé Nast, the ticket portal Eventbrite and the online travel agency Priceline, among others, have seen the new product. A browser with integrated AI search would make OpenAI even more of a competitor to Google. Google clearly dominates the browser market with Chrome. Browsers such as Microsoft's Edge or Brave or Opera are also based on Google's Chromium substructure. It is questionable whether OpenAI would also use this when even Microsoft has abandoned its own development. According to the article, an immediate release of a browser is not on the cards.

With SearchGPT, a competitor to Google's search has already emerged, and Perplexity is also preparing to outstrip Google as an AI search. Google's AI chatbot Gemini has not received the attention that ChatGPT has since its release.

Google threatens to split

Instead, Google is currently the focus of numerous competition and market regulators. In the US, the Department of Justice wants to force Google to sell Chrome. And the sale of the Android mobile operating system is also on the table. The application for this has been filed with the Federal District Court in Washington D.C. This was preceded by a ruling on Google's monopoly position. According to the ruling, Google exploited its dominant market position to prevent competition. This concerns the preferential treatment of the search engine, for example by pre-installing it on many devices, as well as the advertising displayed in the search. Google earns most of its money from advertising.

And it is not only in the USA that Google's business practices are currently being scrutinized. The EU Commission has also already launched formal investigations. These are initial investigations into whether Google is complying with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This is also intended to regulate a fair market and therefore requires some services and products to be opened up. Just recently, DuckDuckGo also complained that Google was not sufficiently complying with the DMA and demanded further investigations. Here too, the accusations concern the browser and search.

If OpenAI also offered a browser, chatbot and search in one, similar accusations could also be made against the AI provider. However, it does not yet have a monopoly position like Google.

(emw)