A break from the usual gaming news to moan about Google for a moment, thanks to their new blog post we have a glimpse of the future of Chrome and it's AI AI AI.
Google say they're about to take a step that will result in "fundamentally changing the nature of browsing" to move from a "passive experience to a more proactive and intelligent one". With that they've announced some major changes will be coming to Chrome.
The first is Gemini, their AI assistant, it's going to be your new "browsing assistant" that will "answer questions about articles, find references within YouTube videos, and will soon be able to help you find pages you’ve visited so you can pick up exactly where you left off" and it will integrate with other Google services.
On top of that they're planning to make "more advanced agentic capabilities for Gemini in Chrome that can perform multi-step tasks for you from start to finish". Difficult things like "booking a haircut" or "ordering your weekly groceries" will be a thing of the past Google hope, as they'll get their AI to do it for you.
Another change will be to the address bar, their "omnibox", as it's going to get "even smarter" with their new AI Mode.
Although, they only mention Windows and macOS for this in the post, no doubt it would come to Linux eventually.

Direct Link
More info across their announcement and another blog post on some of the features.
So soon, you'll be told to add glue to pizza right in the address bar in Google Chrome! Because we all know how factually accurate these AI tools are of course, they never ever make things up. And with their AI Mode right in the browser, the idea of course like with AI Mode on Google Search, is to get you to never click away from anything Google. They want you to stay in their products longer, to generate more data and more revenue from you.
Firefox has also started adding in more AI features too, because apparently that's what everyone will be getting whether you like it or not. You simply must become part of the AI machine.
At no point in my entire browsing history have I ever thought - you know what would make this better? AI!
I think it's time I gave Vivaldi another chance, with their commitment to keeping things human.
If anyone is still using Chrome in 2025, they deserve what they get. I'm still using Vivaldi. Not because it's great but because it's the least awful one I've seen, which is a good description for just about every other aspect of modern life.
The question is how they're making you pay for it.
Still clean of AI and they wrote a blogpost on their site about it
"Why Vivaldi won’t follow the current AI trend?"
even firefox added all the AI slop with 141.. so yeah every major browser on the planet has this crap.
Open source fans love their software having options... up until the point where someone else uses an option they don't like.
I get having a problem with "full agentic AI mode redefining blah blah blah," like Google is seemingly pulling, but if it's togglable like any other feature, what's the issue?
But just think of the memes! It will be glorious!
I've been testing out ProtonMail to replace Gmail and ProtonCalendar to replace Google Calendar. I'm already using Firefox instead of Chrome, and I've also updated my home screen and search bar to use DuckDuckGo. But I still use Android, and particularly rely on Google Maps, so there's still work to be done.
Goddamit. I used to love Google products. I still feel sore about Reader and that was 2013! What the hell happened to this company??
Edit to add: Just have to share this video of Meta's AI in action. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0Ee8IYGKjTQ [External Link]
Last edited by scaine on 19 Sep 2025 at 10:03 am UTC
We're moving a bit too fast to the necessity of a Butlerian Jihad.
like tabs on top, where one needs to use extensions or make manual modifications that often break on version update. Let's see which way this will go...
I got so much no idea why they've done this. I mean, the tab "heading" obviously has such a close relationship to the tab contents - and none to the search bar, the favorites, ...