Ask HN: Why every AI company is building a browser?
6meerab78/6/2025, 5:32:32 PM
It seems every one is building AI browser.
Perplexity has Comet, Dia. Open AI is build its own. What is business justifications?
Comments (7)
mmarian · 17h ago
Data capture.
They can pretend to be humans when requesting content from sites, thus bypassing blocks by Cloudflare et al. The content can be then passed to the AI mothership.
They also get complete visibility over what you do, as @benouau says.
benoau · 21h ago
If they get you using their browser they have complete visibility and control over what you do, whereas Google and Apple control the dominant browsers and subsequently what anyone else can build upon them.
Google has also locked-down default search engine on every major browser, including in at least Apple's case contractual obligation not to provide a search engine selection screen so they're fighting an up-hill battle for adoption there.
This doesn't allow for much and I think especially in terms of agent-control, for example IIUC Playwright and Puppeteer have always had to use modified derivatives of the main browsers for their automation.
_seiryuu_ · 3h ago
Data being piped over to their respective AI flavor.
Plus, riding the hype wave.
farseer · 5h ago
Same reason as why Google built theirs.
ferguess_k · 19h ago
I think they are also building an IDE too. It's just about control.
varbhat · 20h ago
it was chat-ui last year, vscode forks this year and maybe browsers are next.
moomoo11 · 9h ago
If I was them I would build whatever brings my product to more people
They can pretend to be humans when requesting content from sites, thus bypassing blocks by Cloudflare et al. The content can be then passed to the AI mothership.
They also get complete visibility over what you do, as @benouau says.
Google has also locked-down default search engine on every major browser, including in at least Apple's case contractual obligation not to provide a search engine selection screen so they're fighting an up-hill battle for adoption there.
This doesn't allow for much and I think especially in terms of agent-control, for example IIUC Playwright and Puppeteer have always had to use modified derivatives of the main browsers for their automation.
Plus, riding the hype wave.
It’s not that hard.