The world’s most popular browser has gained a dedicated sidebar for AI browsing

Google has reworked its Chrome browser to include a new side panel for interacting with the company's Gemini model, in an effort to support AI-assisted interactions with websites.

Toward that end, Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers have gained the option of delegating browsing tasks to Gemini as a software agent.

Chrome – the world's most popular browser by far with more than 70 percent market share as per StatCounter – thus follows in the path of Microsoft Edge, Perplexity, OpenAI Atlas, and Opera, among others, in the belief that internet users want to sit back while AI does the browsing and (perhaps) buying.

The Gemini button, introduced last September on the top right-hand corner of Chrome, has been adjusted to shrink the display area of websites in order to accommodate a sidebar pane to chat with the Google AI bot.

"This can help you save time and multitask ...