Google announced the largest Chrome update with AI-agentic features powered by Gemini

Google has announced one of the biggest updates to Google Chrome in years, aiming to turn it into an AI-powered browser through tight integration with its Gemini AI assistant. Starting today, Gemini in Chrome is rolling out to Mac and Windows users in the US without a membership fee as before, with Android and iOS support coming soon. The assistant now integrates with Google Workspace for both personal and enterprise accounts and connects with services like Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Maps, or Google Docs, allowing more direct access to your activity to answer questions, summarize pages, find references in YouTube videos, and use context awareness to recognize activity across tabs to surface insights and take action on the screen or retrieve sites from your browsing history with natural queries.

Upcoming updates will add agentic features to handle multi-step tasks, such as booking appointments or finding the best price for a product across different stores, similar to what we have already seen in other AI agents like ChatGPT Agent. Other key features include AI Mode in the address bar for advanced queries and conversational follow-ups, Enhanced Protection Mode to block scam sites, and new AI capabilities in the Password Manager that let it automatically change compromised passwords on supported services. For now, language support is limited to English, with expansion planned.

This new approach from Chrome is expected given Google’s huge broader AI push, though it is clearly up against several competitors aiming for the same space through specialized tools like Anthropic’s Computer Use for Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent, or more natively AI-driven browsers such as the new Perplexity’s Comet and Dia from The Browser Company.

Our take: PS. If you’re not really into all this AI push, it’s probably safe to say you’d be better off with some of Chrome’s alternatives, if you’re not already using one.