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Alphabet Stock Falls as OpenAI Introduces Atlas AI Browser

Oct 21, 2025 12:51:00 -0400 by Nate Wolf | #AI

OpenAI revealed its new AI browser. (Dreamstime)

Key Points

As expected, on Tuesday ChatGPT-maker OpenAI sought to reignite the browser wars of the 1990s and 2000s, announcing a new AI browser called Atlas. OpenAI hopes it will change how people use the World Wide Web, and challenge Google Chrome’s dominance.

On a livestream, OpenAI employees showed how Atlas differs from traditional browsing. Similar to Copilot in Microsoft’s Edge browser, there is an AI chat sidebar that can be used to work with the content of a webpage.

But the bigger feature is an “agent” that can use OpenAI’s language models to carry out a complex series of tasks from a simple command. In a demonstration, an OpenAI engineer asked Atlas to go buy the ingredients from a recipe webpage. Atlas has user memory, so it knew from past interactions that the engineer shopped at Safeway through Instacart . Atlas made all the selections, put them in a basket, and sent it back to the engineer for approval and payment.

These agents, which we are also seeing come to enterprise software, are still primitive, but we should expect their capabilities to increase over time.

OpenAI was already the biggest challenge that Google has seen in years, and this move represents another front in CEO Sam Altman’s quest to scale ChatGPT to the size of Google Search. Though it is given away free, Chrome is a key fixture in the Google ecosystem. It is used as a funnel for Google Search and other services, and any loss of market share could affect ad revenue.

Chrome had a worldwide browser market share of 72% in September, according to web analytics firm Statcounter. In second place at 14% is Apple’s Safari. These browsers are the defaults on Android and Apple smartphones, and they will be tough to dislodge. For now, Atlas will only be available on Macs, so that will severely limit its reach.

We have already seen one historical example of a leading browser being upended. Before smartphones, Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer was the dominant player, running roughshod over early challengers like Netscape. But Internet Explorer was widely derided, and it opened up an opportunity for Google to fill that hole with Chrome. A generation of PC customers used Internet Explorer only once, so they could download Chrome.

Unlike Internet Explorer, people like Chrome, and so OpenAI won’t have the same wind in its sails that Google once did. It will have to rely on a new feature set that makes changing browsers worth it.

And the product isn’t entirely unique. Perplexity also has an AI browser, Comet, while Anthropic has a plugin for Chrome, and we could see something soon from Google in this regard. Like in the first browser wars, there will be many contenders, but probably few winners.

“This is still early days for this project,” said Altman on the livestream. “The idea that we’re excited about is what it means to have custom instructions follow you everywhere on the web and as you have this agent that you’re having do things for you, getting to know you.”

Google stock was down about 2% in midday trading, though it was off its low for the day, and it recovered some earlier losses during the OpenAI livestream.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com adam.levine@barrons.com