A side panel that answers questions about the open page may sound like a small feature, but it could finally kill the habit of copying text into a separate chatbot tab. Google has the browser footprint to do this. Other AI companies have tried to create their own dedicated browser, but that’s an uphill battle. I believe OpenAI scrapped Atlas, for example.
Browser extensions work this way, but you have to install and activate them. Because Google Chrome is one of the most popular browsers (if not the most popular), integrating Gemini directly into the app goes a long way toward pulling users into the Gemini ecosystem (much as they do within Google Search).
Soon, it will be hard not to use AI in your browsing. It can supplement and summarize things easily; just don’t get too lazy and rely only on AI results. It’s important to keep using critical thinking with anything AI.