So you click a button, it pops open a text box in a floating window, you type in a question, and the AI replies. This is the most underwhelming implementation of browser-based AI that they could have come up with. Quite literally just gemini.google.com in an iFrame.
qnleigh · 1h ago
> Quite literally just gemini.google.com in an iFrame.
Hmm, no? It has access to all of the content of all of you're currently open tabs, and is able to parse images on web pages as well.
It would be neat if it could also browse on your behalf, but that would present all kinds of security risks.
paxys · 53m ago
No, it can only access the tab you are currently on. And that too just the content that is already available. It can't scroll up and down to load more. It can't follow links. It can't run any actions. You'll get a ton more functionality by just taking a screenshot of the page yourself and pasting it in ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini.
blharr · 13m ago
>It has access to all of the content of all of your currently open tabs
This is supposed to be a good feature? Not a privacy nightmare?
iansinnott · 5m ago
Likely depends on whether or not its opt-in. If Gemini only gets page content when you ask it to then that's fine.
Of course, it should also be possible to completely disable Gemini so as to avoid accidentally sending it private browsing content.
thwarted · 39m ago
We're too lazy to browse now, that we need machines to do it?
garyfirestorm · 7m ago
It’s not browsing we are lazy at. It’s parsing through ton of results until we find what we were looking for.
riffraff · 30m ago
The idea is you could ask a to browser to do things like operate on multiple websites to do boring stuff, e.g. cross check phone reviews across sites x y and z.
I 100% don't feel comfortable letting my browser work alone, but "agentic browsers" are a thing some people want and/or are building.
Hopefully this will not affect other browser that are downstream of Chromium.
firefoxd · 2h ago
The future of web browsing is the tiktok model. Where you don't surf the web, but the web is served to you "algorithmically". Do it long enough, and you'll be serve the pages you want and it will feel like it was your idea all along. Gemini everywhere is the first step.
thwarted · 38m ago
An infinite number of people at an infinite number of computers will eventually be served the content they desire.
xnx · 27m ago
Maybe, but that sounds a lot like Google Discover, which is part of Android, the Chrome new tab page and (sometimes?) the Google home page.
esperent · 50m ago
I wouldn't gave a major problem with this if the algorithms were tuned to my benefit. In fact, I probably prefer it since most of the web is noise that I don't need to see. So the problem isn't algorithmic content, it's closed source algorithms designed to benefit the company that made them rather than the user.
mikae1 · 6m ago
> I wouldn't gave a major problem with this if the algorithms were tuned to my benefit.
Due to the law of enshittification it will eventually never be tuned to your benefit.
isodev · 35m ago
That’s the future if we leave it to the tech bros. As humans we can and should do better though.
geor9e · 2h ago
A danger with google is how flippantly they will ban google accounts for the dumbest things. Now theres a button to livesteam your browsing tied to your google account. I wonder how many people are going to lose 20 years of gmail Gphotos and GDrive files because they accidentally clicked gemini at the wrong moment on the wrong website.
onehair · 42m ago
I saw the new before I sleep, and slepped peacefully. Because I'd already switched to brave 2 years ago. And once more to firefox 2 months ago.
With firefox I feel I finally own my browser and no company is gonna push things down my throat I didn't first agree to
t_mann · 36m ago
You might want to check Firefox' telemetry settings if you care about privacy. Or you can use Librewolf, it's an extension-compatible FF fork with privacy turned on.
dodos · 27m ago
Librewolf is great, but from my experience the default settings are painful for daily use. My biggest gripe is the auto-clear cookies on restart. I understand why it could be useful to some users, but for most I doubt they'd want that in a daily browser. This makes Librewolf need tweaking just as much as Firefox does which kind of ruins the point of it in my experience. (although you are tweaking for usability rather than privacy)
navigate8310 · 16m ago
It's just a simple one-time tweak under settings to halt clearing cookies upon browser restart.
antipaul · 46m ago
The danger with google is that they suck at user experience
ghm2199 · 36m ago
Wait, how does this footgun work?
beebmam · 1h ago
Does Apple do this often? I've always wondered if iCloud is worth getting, given that it constantly spams me to use it with my iPhone
dundundundun · 1h ago
If they do close an account they have a support line you can call and talk to a human.
tjohns · 50m ago
For what it's worth, Apple closed my mom's account due to inactivity. (She hadn't used an Apple product since 2007.)
They do have phone support, but they refused to unlock the account and just said she'll never be able to use primary email account with Apple's systems because of the frozen account.
So yes, any cloud provider can lock you out for arbitrary reasons. Just because they answer the phone doesn't mean the customer support agent can actually do anything about it.
pram · 40m ago
It has great features otherwise, I have like 100+ aliases with Hide My Email. You don't even need to use iCloud email with it.
TheDong · 1h ago
Yeah, it's such a huge risk.
I once accidentally hit the "screenshot" button on my android phone while I had bing.com open, which uploaded that photo to google photos automatically, and my account was banned the next day.
The next account, I was in a Google Meet call with someone, and I said "Geez, meet is so slow, we should switch to zoom", and my account was instantly banned.
My third account got banned for emailing curse words to ceo@google.com, calling them all sorts of bad words for banning my first two accounts.
......
My point is, there are zero instances I know of where a google account has been banned for sharing content with a service, be that uploading porn to google drive or google photos, emailing competitors, screenshotting on android, etc etc.
The _only_ exception I know to that is uploading CSAM, so as long as you don't like go to CSAM sites and click the gemini button you should be fine.
If you're worried about clicking the gemini button "on the wrong website", and by that you do mean CSAM, then good, I hope such a person does get banned.
The actual way I've lost all my google accounts is that they reject logging in with the correct password after I move and get a new IP, they insist I need to use my backup email to login, and my backup email is with some ISP that has since gone out of business, or is a @yahoo email that got deleted by yahoo.
BrawnyBadger53 · 51m ago
Except people take photos of their kids all the time and there is precedent of parents losing their Google accounts for this.
Google wiped my account for posting a jpeg of a credit card form with "THIS POST ONLY VIEWABLE WITH GOOGLE+ GOLD" to their old social media site. Gmail,Gdrive, everything tied to the account gone forever. They would only tell me it got flagged "phishing". The TOS has a laundry list of words to ban you under. Whichever reason their overseas moderation farm clicks, after looking 0.7 seconds at a screengrab flagged by a hallucinating AI, isn't ever going to be reviewed by anyone further. There's no support or appeal path for a free account.
I don’t understand who this is for? I just tried Anthropic’s extension and it feels like writing automated selenium tests.
LLMs interacting with markup is not the best abstraction layer.
skybrian · 1h ago
It sounds like an alternative for passing a URL to a chat session, with the advantage that you could share web pages that require a log in.
But you might want to be careful about which web pages you share this way?
resonious · 2h ago
Right it felt pretty bad. It chugs tons of tokens just to be like "I need to scroll up!". Then 5 seconds later it scrolls up, chugs more tokens. "I need to scroll up more!"
nextworddev · 2h ago
It’s for Google to gain complete control of the context whereever you are on the Internet
jama211 · 2h ago
Google would control everything if they could, but this won’t achieve that and they know that so it’s not the specific intention of this. Even if you’re feeling doomerish about it.
nextworddev · 2h ago
Ok dude
albert_e · 2h ago
Microsoft baked in Copilot into Edge more than a year ago.
It was forced into Windows task bar as well.
This seems to be in the same vein.
The28thDuck · 2h ago
I hereby declare this to be the future! We made it folks. Time to pack it up. See you in a 2002 LAN party.
dwd · 42m ago
I have a D25 Laplink Cable somewhere and maybe even a copy of Netware 4.
cwmoore · 2h ago
What is LAN?
easeout · 24m ago
Baby don't hurt me
blooalien · 1h ago
> What is LAN?
I think it's like the opposite of WAN? :shrug:
nomilk · 2h ago
I tried it on this page and says 'I don't have access' [0].
You need to do it via Gemini in Chrome in an updated Chrome install (roughly 140.0.7339.186 or newer) on Mac/Windows using the English language with the relevant permissions enabled in the sections under chrome://settings/ai
My guess is it's either the first part (doing it via Gemini in Chrome) or the last part (permissions enabled).
nomilk · 2h ago
I typed @gemini in the searchbar and it turned blue and text switched to 'Ask Gemini' to indicate it worked (but it didn't work - Gemini says it doesn't have access to the screen/webpage).
chrome://settings/ai redirects to chrome://settings (general settings). Manually searching 'ai' brings up dozens of other settings - stuff like 'mail' (which contains 'ai' string) - but nothing Gemini-related.
On the most up to date chrome: Version 140.0.7339.186 (Official Build) (arm64)
The instructional video [0] says there should be a 'Gemini' icon on the top of the Chrome browser, but I don't have one (macOS). (do I have to have a paid Gemini account for it to be there?).
In any case, when OpenAI and Grok launch things, I usually just go and try them in about 20 seconds. By comparison Google's AI launches are tedious..
The "Ask Gemini" thing existed before this, between that and the lack of an AI settings page it seems it's not considering the system as one of the initial supported ones (but why specifically I'm not sure).
I can confirm a paid Gemini account is not [corrected] needed.
No problem, it took me a minute to get it enabled myself - not sure why it's so special cased for what it is.
nomilk · 1h ago
> I can confirm a paid Gemini account is needed.
Google should say this up front (or at least prompt that I need to pay) rather than wasting users' time.
The 'How do I use Gemini in Chrome?' section of their launch page doesn't say anything about that requirement either.
Anyway, </rant>. Thanks for your help.
zamadatix · 17m ago
My apologize, I swear I tried to type "is not needed" but must have completely brain farted.
To reclarify: A paid account is NOT needed. I do not have one and it works. Do note the page says a US based Google account is needed though, it just doesn't need to be a paid gemini account.
nomilk · 1h ago
I asked Gemini and it may says you need a US based Google account:
Honestly, it would be great if it were "Gemma in Chrome" instead.
A local model capable enough to do the things that this is designed to do? Yes please.
Gemini in Chrome is a way to increase adoption. Gemma in Chrome is an innovation - a platform that allows developers to build stuff leveraging the local model. A step closer to a world where we can talk to our computers and have them do what we mean instead of what we say.
mmaunder · 1h ago
Ok Google employees, please quit the vote brigading.
maz1b · 2h ago
I mean, is anyone really surprised that this was going to happen?
Google is about to break even further away in the LLM race with this move, seeing as they will be getting an absolutely, supremely stunning amount of regular and novel data 24/7. Not everyone uses dedicated LLM interfaces, but more people I know use Google search. As Google === Search for so many.
Nevertheless, it is an business savvy move to make, considering the recent ruling by the judge to not force Google to split apart or break up its business w/r/t to Chrome.
deanmoriarty · 2h ago
What do you think this will mean for OpenAI, Anthropic and their current valuations?
ocdtrekkie · 2h ago
I bet the judge already realizes how mistaken he was to let them off. Now they'll use their monopoly product to ensure monopoly control in the new market he was so sure would rein them in.
Workaccount2 · 1h ago
The thing about chrome is that people use it because they like it. It's not forced or bundled with windows or iOS.
A monopoly is when you do anti-competitive things, not when your product is far and away the most popular.
If anything blame Firefox for dropping the ball so damn hard
ocdtrekkie · 1h ago
This is... a woefully uninformed statement. You realize they just lost several monopoly cases, including around Chrome? They just got off on the meaningful penalty.
Google is an anticompetitive monopoly, and Chrome is an anticompetitive monopoly. This has been established by multiple courts of law. Your armchair claims to the contrary hold no water.
mmastrac · 2h ago
Given the current err climate of thought purity, doesn't this seem a little too risky of a product to enable?
Poomba · 2h ago
I feel like we are past that point now. The fact that AI will get things wrong has been normalized already
reenorap · 48m ago
How is this not stealing clicks from other web pages and advertisers? There is no way that people are forgoing clicking on links at this point if they get the answers right away.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
Google taking advantage of their anti competitive monopolies
muppetman · 2h ago
How do you turn it off?
weikju · 2h ago
Firefox/brave/orion/vivaldi/safari/librewolf/etc
Admittedly some of them have their own AI offerings but not as invasive and can actually be turned off.
zamadatix · 2h ago
chrome://settings/ai
atonse · 2h ago
Blah. On the one hand, this is where the monopoly power of putting Gemini in Chrome should be looked into by the DOJ. On the other hand, this might make me switch back to chrome.
These are all things Apple could build into safari, but they're nowhere to be seen. They'll be stuck solving yesterday's problems (like building an infinitesimally better camera for the latest iPhone), but not at all integrating any AI into them.
vachina · 2h ago
Google had to do this. They cannot die standing watching ChatGPT et. al. eating their ad-free lunch.
onion2k · 37m ago
The problem with that is Google has burned so many bridges with users over the past couple of decades that moving off the ad model to some sort of paid subscription service is going to be next to impossible. People just don't trust Google any more. I know many people who happily pay OpenAI every month but wouldn't pay the same for Google Gemini even if it was better.
Not to mention that actually giving Google money for anything other than an in-app purchase is oddly hard work - try buying a Google business subscription and behold an interface worse than AWS's console. Google has so much catching up to do that it's conceivable that they'll eventually fail.
EZ-E · 1h ago
We need a [US Only] tag on the thread title, I almost got excited
Maybe someone can post the change log tomorrow and we can do it again.
I'm thinking over the weekend we could post the GitHub merge of these AI features so we can give Google even more exposure.
By Tuesday I hope someone will write a review of these features rehashing the same thing. I'd love to have that be upvoted to the top of HN again.
Razengan · 1h ago
Isn't Google putting AI results at the top some sort of conflict of interest?
Like if users can just get the info they want right at Google.com why would they click through to any of the search results? Isn't that stealing clicks from websites?
eclipxe · 1h ago
Stealing clicks? What obligation does Google have to send traffic to a site?
Razengan · 56m ago
What if that site paid for ads or to appear at the top of search results? Google's AI crap appears above even sponsored sites.
65 · 2h ago
Who wants to bet that Chrome makes this feature impossible to disable?
elpakal · 2h ago
I’ll take that bet. You will be able to disable it but that won’t mean they won’t still run it.
onion2k · 36m ago
I'll take that bet too. You will always be able to disable it by not using Chrome.
bertili · 2h ago
EU: Open goal and no keeper in sight. Just a small tab. Please.
rvz · 2h ago
Time for more security researchers to collect more money on data exfiltration reports when attackers instruct and trick LLMs to steal private user information and fall for fake websites generated by AI to accidentally send private information to attackers.
Welcome to the Vibe Browsing security nightmare.
keyle · 1h ago
You didn't want it in your computer, bang, it's there!
You didn't want it in your phone, bang, it's there!
You didn't want it in your browser, bang, it's there!
Next, coming to a fridge near you! /s
blooalien · 1h ago
> Next, coming to a fridge near you! /s
Well, with Samsung forcing ads on their "smart" fridges [0], Google + AI can't be far behind.
Hmm, no? It has access to all of the content of all of you're currently open tabs, and is able to parse images on web pages as well.
It would be neat if it could also browse on your behalf, but that would present all kinds of security risks.
This is supposed to be a good feature? Not a privacy nightmare?
Of course, it should also be possible to completely disable Gemini so as to avoid accidentally sending it private browsing content.
I 100% don't feel comfortable letting my browser work alone, but "agentic browsers" are a thing some people want and/or are building.
I do need machines to do the browsing for me.
https://research.google/blog/mechanism-design-for-large-lang...
Due to the law of enshittification it will eventually never be tuned to your benefit.
They do have phone support, but they refused to unlock the account and just said she'll never be able to use primary email account with Apple's systems because of the frozen account.
So yes, any cloud provider can lock you out for arbitrary reasons. Just because they answer the phone doesn't mean the customer support agent can actually do anything about it.
I once accidentally hit the "screenshot" button on my android phone while I had bing.com open, which uploaded that photo to google photos automatically, and my account was banned the next day.
The next account, I was in a Google Meet call with someone, and I said "Geez, meet is so slow, we should switch to zoom", and my account was instantly banned.
My third account got banned for emailing curse words to ceo@google.com, calling them all sorts of bad words for banning my first two accounts.
......
My point is, there are zero instances I know of where a google account has been banned for sharing content with a service, be that uploading porn to google drive or google photos, emailing competitors, screenshotting on android, etc etc.
The _only_ exception I know to that is uploading CSAM, so as long as you don't like go to CSAM sites and click the gemini button you should be fine.
If you're worried about clicking the gemini button "on the wrong website", and by that you do mean CSAM, then good, I hope such a person does get banned.
The actual way I've lost all my google accounts is that they reject logging in with the correct password after I move and get a new IP, they insist I need to use my backup email to login, and my backup email is with some ISP that has since gone out of business, or is a @yahoo email that got deleted by yahoo.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-cs...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292260
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292163
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292637
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45296416
LLMs interacting with markup is not the best abstraction layer.
But you might want to be careful about which web pages you share this way?
It was forced into Windows task bar as well.
This seems to be in the same vein.
I think it's like the opposite of WAN? :shrug:
[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nx4gJA-qWodYWm-SK87Aa63i_jF...
My guess is it's either the first part (doing it via Gemini in Chrome) or the last part (permissions enabled).
chrome://settings/ai redirects to chrome://settings (general settings). Manually searching 'ai' brings up dozens of other settings - stuff like 'mail' (which contains 'ai' string) - but nothing Gemini-related.
On the most up to date chrome: Version 140.0.7339.186 (Official Build) (arm64)
The instructional video [0] says there should be a 'Gemini' icon on the top of the Chrome browser, but I don't have one (macOS). (do I have to have a paid Gemini account for it to be there?).
In any case, when OpenAI and Grok launch things, I usually just go and try them in about 20 seconds. By comparison Google's AI launches are tedious..
(thanks for the help btw)
[0] https://gemini.google/overview/gemini-in-chrome/
I can confirm a paid Gemini account is not [corrected] needed.
No problem, it took me a minute to get it enabled myself - not sure why it's so special cased for what it is.
Google should say this up front (or at least prompt that I need to pay) rather than wasting users' time.
The 'How do I use Gemini in Chrome?' section of their launch page doesn't say anything about that requirement either.
Anyway, </rant>. Thanks for your help.
To reclarify: A paid account is NOT needed. I do not have one and it works. Do note the page says a US based Google account is needed though, it just doesn't need to be a paid gemini account.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZifoxoUSy1vEgh2Qx8GaCsb5ywE...
A local model capable enough to do the things that this is designed to do? Yes please.
Gemini in Chrome is a way to increase adoption. Gemma in Chrome is an innovation - a platform that allows developers to build stuff leveraging the local model. A step closer to a world where we can talk to our computers and have them do what we mean instead of what we say.
Google is about to break even further away in the LLM race with this move, seeing as they will be getting an absolutely, supremely stunning amount of regular and novel data 24/7. Not everyone uses dedicated LLM interfaces, but more people I know use Google search. As Google === Search for so many.
Nevertheless, it is an business savvy move to make, considering the recent ruling by the judge to not force Google to split apart or break up its business w/r/t to Chrome.
A monopoly is when you do anti-competitive things, not when your product is far and away the most popular.
If anything blame Firefox for dropping the ball so damn hard
Google is an anticompetitive monopoly, and Chrome is an anticompetitive monopoly. This has been established by multiple courts of law. Your armchair claims to the contrary hold no water.
Admittedly some of them have their own AI offerings but not as invasive and can actually be turned off.
These are all things Apple could build into safari, but they're nowhere to be seen. They'll be stuck solving yesterday's problems (like building an infinitesimally better camera for the latest iPhone), but not at all integrating any AI into them.
Not to mention that actually giving Google money for anything other than an in-app purchase is oddly hard work - try buying a Google business subscription and behold an interface worse than AWS's console. Google has so much catching up to do that it's conceivable that they'll eventually fail.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292260
Maybe someone can post the change log tomorrow and we can do it again.
I'm thinking over the weekend we could post the GitHub merge of these AI features so we can give Google even more exposure.
By Tuesday I hope someone will write a review of these features rehashing the same thing. I'd love to have that be upvoted to the top of HN again.
Like if users can just get the info they want right at Google.com why would they click through to any of the search results? Isn't that stealing clicks from websites?
Welcome to the Vibe Browsing security nightmare.
You didn't want it in your phone, bang, it's there!
You didn't want it in your browser, bang, it's there!
Next, coming to a fridge near you! /s
Well, with Samsung forcing ads on their "smart" fridges [0], Google + AI can't be far behind.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292666