You’re up to your neck in a research project, but the finish line is in sight. You press the close button on your browser. It disappears and takes the dozens of tabs you open with it. You breathe a sigh of relief – and then remember that you only need to check one from one of the web pages you open for more details. The problem is you don’t know which one it is or how to get back there. You start digging through your browser history, frantically clicking on any page that looks familiar, but you knew you looked as if it was lost.
If that sounds familiar, a new feature coming to Google Chrome on the desktop in the next few weeks might be just what you need. With it, you’ll be able to ask questions about your browsing history in natural language using Gemini, a large family of language models that power Google’s AI systems. “What was that ice cream shop I looked at last week?” you can write a question like after accessing your history, access your address bar and Chrome will display the relevant pages from everything you’ve ever browsed.
“The top level really wants to introduce a more conversational interface to Chrome history so people don’t have to remember URLs,” Parisa Tabriz, vice president of Chrome, told reporters before the announcement.
For now, this feature will only be available to Chrome desktop users in the US and will be enabled by default. It also won’t work with websites you view in Incognito mode. And the company says it’s aware of the implications of Google’s AI analyzing your browsing history to respond to you. The company doesn’t directly use your browsing history or bookmarks to train large language models, Tabriz said. “Anything related to browsing history is super personal, sensitive information,” he said. “We want to be really thoughtful and make sure we think about privacy from the beginning and by design.”
In addition to making your search history more conversational, Google is adding two new AI-powered features to Chrome. Finally, it’s bringing Google Lens, already on both Android and iPhones, to Chrome on the desktop in the US. “This means you can easily select, search and ask questions about anything you see on the web, all without leaving the current tab,” according to Google’s blog post about the feature.
You can search with Google Lens in Chrome on the desktop by selecting its icon in the address bar and then clicking on anything on the web page you want to search. For example, clicking on a plant image on a web page with Google Lens will open a sidebar directly on the web page and identify it. Then ask, “How much sunlight does this plant need to survive?” you can ask additional questions like and enter AI-generated answers without leaving the page you’re on.
Lens is also capable of analyzing text in videos, meaning you can pause and directly select any text displayed in the frame (such as a math equation) and quickly get an image in the sidebar with more AI-generated information about it.
Finally, Google is adding Tab Compare, a feature that will provide you with an AI-generated overview of products across multiple tabs in one place, “Collecting all the key details – product features, specifications, prices, ratings – in one tab, so you don’t have to switch tabs endlessly.” you’ll be able to easily compare and make an informed decision,” says Google.
For now, the feature is limited to products, but Tabriz envisions a future where it could evolve to compare multiple schools, universities, kindergartens, or anything that “could make it easier for people to make comparative decisions.”
