Google adds Gemini to Chrome, 2 weeks after search remedies ruling
Illustration by Nick DeSantis and Reagan Hicks / Getty / Shutterstock / The Current
Google announced on Thursday that it added its AI assistant, Gemini, to the Chrome browser for all U.S. users, a major step in the company’s AI aspirations that it called “the biggest upgrade to Chrome in its history.”
The company said that in the coming months it will also introduce “agentic capabilities” to Gemini in Chrome, which will enable the AI to act on a user’s behalf to complete tasks like booking appointments or making purchases.
Later this month, users will be able to use AI mode in search from the Chrome address bar.
But AI may already be changing how many users interact with the web. For instance, a recent Pew Research Center study found that Google users were less likely to click on links if they encountered an AI summary.
Meanwhile, Perplexity — an emerging player in AI search — is offering publishers a share in revenue if their articles appear in search queries.
Google’s announcement comes two weeks after a federal judge determined remedies in the Google search antitrust case.
Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled in August that Google illegally maintained a monopoly over search general services and general search text advertising. Earlier this month, Mehta determined, partly, that Google must share some search results with “qualified competitors,” but it did not have to sell Chrome, one remedy that the U.S. Department of Justice was seeking.
AI’s implications for the search space seemed to impact Mehta’s decision, writing that the “emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case” and that AI technologies could be “game changers.”