Today, OpenAI announced its new Atlas web browser in a surprise livestream. The show began with CEO Sam Altman himself speaking directly to the audience.
“We believe AI is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to reimagine what a browser is,” said Altman. “Just as the URL bar and search box were great analogs for the way we used to use the Internet, we’re starting to see that chat experiences and web browsers can also be easily analogous.”
It was a moving note, in typical Steve Jobs mode. But even more important than Altman’s browser was the debris he was sweeping aside to make room. It doesn’t just make current browsers look old, it’s part of the overall package of products that AI is replacing, and in Altman’s words, it was part of “the way people used the internet before.” And most of the soon-to-be-deprecated services trace back to one company: Google.
OpenAI’s browser project has been an open secret in Silicon Valley since at least this summer, and it was clear from the start that it posed a potential threat to Google, the current owner of the world’s most popular browser. But Tuesday’s product and presentation details revealed exactly how much the web giant has to lose in the AI era, and how little Google’s success with Gemini seems to be helping.
The immediate threat is very simple. ChatGPT attracts 800 million users each week, and when those users switch to Atlas, they’re more likely to switch away from Chrome. Losing these users won’t immediately cost Google much (it’s a free product, after all). However, it limits Google’s ability to target ads to these users and direct them to Google Search. This is particularly galling because just last month, Google was barred from entering into search exclusivity deals by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Next is how OpenAI handles search itself. AI is already taxing the web’s search models, surfacing processed information rather than promotable content. But on the OpenAI livestream, Ben Goodger, head of engineering at Atlas (who himself was central to the development of Firefox and Chrome), described the new kind of chat-oriented search as a paradigm shift.
“This new search model is really powerful,” Gooder said. “It’s a multi-pass experience. Instead of just being sent to a web page, you can go back and forth through search results.”
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Of course, Google has done a lot to integrate AI into the regular search experience, but the company has mostly approached it the same way it does with product listings and reviews: adding boxes to results pages. However, active interactions like OpenAI go beyond what Chrome can achieve and are not something that can be easily replicated given the vastly different approaches. If OpenAI’s search interface becomes popular, it could pose a serious threat to Google’s dominance.
Next is a question about advertising. OpenAI does not currently offer advertising, but is careful not to exclude it. The company has also recently posted a number of ad tech-related jobs, fueling speculation that a pivot to advertising is on the horizon. Atlas allows ChatGPT to collect context directly from a user’s browser window, providing a wealth of invaluable data for ad targeting. This is an unprecedented level of direct browser access. You literally see the words on the screen as you type. And after decades of privacy fears, that’s not the kind of sensitive information users are likely to provide to Google or Meta.
Atlas is still in its early stages, and a lot depends on the product itself and whether users really want what OpenAI has to offer. But the company is planning a surprising commercial path here, with a focus on user and revenue growth rather than vague ambitions around AGI. As infrastructure experts ponder the $300 billion question of whether OpenAI’s revenues justify building massive data centers, products like Atlas may be the first to look for answers.
