{"id":241986,"date":"2025-10-26T12:28:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T12:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/241986\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T12:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T12:28:15","slug":"i-tried-chatgpts-atlas-browser-to-rival-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/241986\/","title":{"rendered":"I tried ChatGPT’s Atlas browser to rival Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imran Rahman-JonesTechnology reporter<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

OpenAI wants to take on similar browsers such as those from Microsoft, Oracle and Perplexity<\/p>\n

A few minutes into using ChatGPT Atlas, the new internet browser from OpenAI, I ran into quite a big road block.<\/p>\n

This isn’t like Google Chrome, which is used by roughly 60% of people. It’s all built around a chatbot you’re meant to talk to to surf the web.<\/p>\n

“Messages limit reached,” read one note. “No available models support the tools in use,” said another.<\/p>\n

And then: “You’ve hit the free plan limit for GPT-5.”<\/p>\n

OpenAI says it will make using the internet easier<\/a> and more efficient. A step closer to “a true super-assistant”.<\/p>\n

But assistants, super or not, don’t come free – and the company needs to start making a lot more money from its 800 million users.<\/p>\n

So how helpful is it?<\/p>\n

OpenAI says Atlas offers us an opportunity to “rethink what it means to use the web”.<\/p>\n

It looks somewhat similar to Chrome or Apple’s Safari to begin with, apart from the big difference – a sidebar chatbot.<\/p>\n

\"ChatGPTChatGPT<\/p>\n

On the BBC News website, for example, it suggests it could show me the trending stories, or filter stories according to my interests<\/p>\n

On a train booking website, it offered to “highlight deals” or compare prices with other places.<\/p>\n

I asked it to book me a train, but was told this is only available for paying ChatGPT customers.<\/p>\n

Later, I tried something simpler: I asked it to take me to an article I was reading the other day, but couldn’t quite remember what website it was on.<\/p>\n

\"ChatGPTChatGPT<\/p>\n

Atlas rapidly searched my browsing history and opened the page for me in a matter of seconds<\/p>\n

These are early days, but there’s potential for big changes in how we use the internet.<\/p>\n

What’s clear is this will be a premium product which will only work to its full capacity if you pay a subscription fee.<\/p>\n

Given we are so used to browsing the internet for free, this would require a lot of people to alter their habits quite dramatically.<\/p>\n

Money, data, competition<\/p>\n

OpenAI’s founding mission was to reach artificial general intelligence – roughly meaning an AI which can match human intelligence.<\/p>\n

So how does a browser help with that mission?<\/p>\n

It doesn’t, really. But it could raise some revenue.<\/p>\n

The firm has convinced venture capitalists and investors to back it with billions of dollars – and at some point, it needs to start showing a return on that investment.<\/p>\n

In other words, it needs to make money. <\/p>\n

\"ChatGPTChatGPT<\/p>\n

The chatbot still struggled with some basic commands – in these examples, it gave two very different responses when I said “yes please”<\/p>\n

But raising money the internet’s traditional way – advertising – might be a risk.<\/p>\n

“OpenAI may be tempted to show ads to recoup costs and turn a profit, but it also must deliver a good user experience to stand out in a competitive market,” said Stephanie Liu, a senior analyst at Forrester.<\/p>\n

OpenAI will be hoping its users will find it so good they are willing to start paying – but only about 5% of ChatGPT users pay for a subscription, according to the Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The other thing Atlas could do is give the firm access to a huge amount of user data.<\/p>\n

These kinds of AI tools are ultimately about scale – the more data you feed them, the thinking goes, the better they will become.<\/p>\n

The web is designed for humans to use, so if Atlas can monitor us – how we book train tickets for example – it can learn how to better navigate these kinds of processes.<\/p>\n

“It remains to be seen how OpenAI will use users’ data from Atlas, but for users who prefer anonymity and privacy, the browser may be too great of a risk,” said Ms Liu.<\/p>\n

The Google killer<\/p>\n

Then we get to the competition.<\/p>\n

Google Chrome is so dominant, authorities around the world have started raising eyebrows<\/a> and words like “monopoly” are being thrown around.<\/p>\n

It won’t be easy to muscle into that market.<\/p>\n

Google’s Gemini AI is a part of the search engine now, while Microsoft has added Copilot into its Edge browser.<\/p>\n

Back in the early days of ChatGPT, some dubbed it the “Google killer<\/a>” – a game-changer which would make online search as we know it redundant.<\/p>\n

That’s not happened yet. But Erik Goins, founder of app developer Flywheel Studios, thinks it could.<\/p>\n

He said Google built its business on “being the middleman between users and websites”, whereas ChatGPT is “eliminating the middleman entirely”.<\/p>\n

“You don’t search for ‘hotels in Miami’ and click through Google results anymore,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You just ask ChatGPT and it connects you directly.”<\/p>\n

Whether enough people are willing to pay for that little bit of extra convenience remains to be seen – and there’s a long way to go before Google is toppled.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imran Rahman-JonesTechnology reporter Getty Images OpenAI wants to take on similar browsers such as those from Microsoft, Oracle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-241986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}