What Gemini will do in Chrome, and when it will be released, isn't known. In a list of announcements that spanned dozens of pages, Google allocated just a single line to the announcement: "Gemini is coming to Chrome, so you can ask questions while browsing the web."
Within Edge, Microsoft uses Copilot to summarize documents and web pages, as well as answer questions about the content within them. Gemini will do the same, but well after Microsoft integrated Copilot — a possible reason for downplaying the announcement.
Google is using Gemini as a catch-all for various AI functions, much in the same way that Microsoft uses Copilot as an AI brand. Google, like Microsoft, is pushing agentic AI, where various bits of autonomous AI work independently to pursue tasks.
Google calls this "Project Mariner," and will appear in mobile and on the desktop. It may appear as "Agent Mode," so a task like searching for an apartment in Austin could be broken down into tasks like searching rental agencies , and so on. It will be coming soon, to "subscribers," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a keynote address at its Google I/O developer conference on Tuesday.
You'll see Gemini appear in Chrome as early as this week, Google executives said. However, you'll need to be a Gemini subscriber to take advantage of its features, a requirement that Microsoft does not apply with Copilot for Edge.
Updated at 11:20 AM PT with additional detail.
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