We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
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A browser for agentic search by Perplexity.
Comet Browser is an upcoming Browser built by the team behind Perplexity (one of the most promising search-focused AI teams right now).
What they realized is that web browsers are at the core of search, so what if they built a browser that has their AI search at the core? Might sound familiar to The Browser Company's thesis with their new upcoming Dia Browser, but Perplexity is quite a bit larger and has had more success in the search space, taking nearly 2% of global search traffic.
Perplexity has something up their sleeve with Comet though, and it's all around their Assistant.
Comet's built-in assistant is what sets it apart from all the best browsers we've covered. It handles the new table-stakes well, with Perplexity at the core, so all the usual search and research functionality is handled.
It can also interact with open tabs, allowing you to essentially target your search and research to a more specific dataset to what you're looking into. But Dia can do this as well, so it's not particularly standout in a browser.
But what does set it apart is Comet gives us the first actual glance at what this coveted "Agentic Browsing" experience actually is, in a non-technical, actually user-friendly way.
What does this mean? Well it can connect into your calendar and email to tell you about important emails (cool, like Google Assistant, right?), but most impressively it can even navigate the web for you.
I'm saying that you can ask it to do things, and it will actually navigate around the page your on, open new pages when needed, and take action as if it's a human you're asking to do something for you.
With all of that said, moving into the browser space is incredibly difficult, but there is something incredibly interesting about this new wave of AI browsers, and we're totally here for the browser space to finally evolve.
No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers. Just a lightning fast browser that doesn’t sell you out.
Firefox is one of the only privacy-focused browsers that is not built atop Chromium, in theory giving it further distance from the stronghold that Google has in the browser market.
What this ultimately means is all the Chrome extensions that people use and rely on are not compatible with Firefox unless rebuilt specifically for it. Think of it like iOS, Android, and Windows Phone/BlackBerry (which neither exist anymore, but the point is), you'll typically get developers building for iOS first (think of as Chromium/Chrome), Android second (think of as Webkit/Safari), and then Quantum Browser Engine third (Firefox).
Because of that, while you may be choosing a "privacy-focused" browser like Firefox, you're also getting substantially less third-party app support, and a higher chance of websites not performing as intended (like legacy banks or modern sites using newer technology). It simply comes down to there not being enough marketshare for web developers to focus on making everything work properly in Firefox as it only accounts for less than 3% of global marketshare.
Given this foundational difference, it means that the millions of Chrome extensions that are accessible to people, are not in Firefox, unless they rebuild it for Firefox, giving people less options if they choose Firefox as their primary browser.
For that reason, most people who use Firefox also use a second browser as well (typically based on Chromium), like Arc Browser, Chrome, or Brave for when they need full features and functionality like full Chrome Extension support.
That said, while they are a non-profit and privacy focused, they still make the far majority of their money from Google ($500M/yr) by having Google as the default search engine. So if you want to be a sustainable browser, you really need to just make a deal with Google in some way.
Some argue that Google is in some way strategically paying Firefox at this point just to make it seem like Chrome is not a monopoly.
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