hi bud buds,
what internet browser are you using these days?
this past week, perplexity launched comet, its first ai web browser. they’re not alone:
open ai is planning to release its own ai browser in the next few weeks
in june, the browser company announced a pivot from their popular web browser (arc) to an ai browser called dia
per google trends, interest in ai browsers is up almost 400% year-over-year
and yet… i don’t know anyone who actually uses an ai browser. most of my product / design friends are still on chrome or arc. i recently started testing dia out of curiosity; the key value props so far:
the ai chat lives side-by-side with whatever page i’m on, letting me quickly ask questions about text that i’m reading, or revise text that i’m writing
i can @ reference content from other tabs without pasting it into chat (though i haven’t used this much yet)
so far, dia doesn’t feel dramatically better than arc or chrome. however, i understand now why leading ai companies are all sprinting towards this space: dia is getting radical, all-encompassing visibility into my life. everything i search, everything i write, everything i buy. if you want to understand someone’s deepest, darkest, truest self, their internet history might be the best possible way.
for the past year, chat gpt has been my primary destination for ai help. however, in just a few hours, dia might now have more valuable context about me than openai — because it’s passively monitoring everything i browse, not just what i choose to actively share in chat.
if in the future we’ll all have ai assistants, and their abilities will depend on how much context they have on us, then owning the browsing experience of consumers will be a critical battleground for ai companies over the next few years.
i expect a lot more product investment here in the near future; can’t wait to see how our browsers change.
have a great week, y’all. i love you.
- dj
last week’s biggest product releases
‼ woah
aws launched an ai agent marketplace, letting startups offer agents to aws customers with minimal revenue share taken. not sure if centralized marketplaces like this will become the primary way we discover agents, as opposed to more decentralized models - like how we discover apis today (on company websites / via their docs)
xai (elon’s ai company) is bringing its ai chat bot grok to all tesla vehicles, allowing drivers to chat with their cars
💗 i love
waymo started robotaxi testing in philadelphia and nyc as part of its nationwide expansion into new markets. so stoked to soon have waymo in nyc.
additionally, waymo introduced teen accounts in phoenix, letting teens ride robotaxis with trip statuses shared with parents. ecstatic that it seems waymo will be fully capable of ferrying my future children around
without me having to drive their punk assesgoogle added a manage subscriptions tool to gmail to easily see and unsubscribe from all your email newsletters. think rocket money, but for your inbox. i love this feature; just cleaned up a bunch of old newsletter subs (screenshot here of where to find; took me a while to locate)
👍 nice
samsung launched its galaxy watch8 smartwatch with cool new features including bedtime suggestions based on your sleep data, metrics on your vascular system stress, a running coach that suggests optimal paces for your runs, and metrics on antioxidant levels from reading your skin
google is rolling out gemini to its smart watches, letting users interact via voice to ask questions, write emails, and schedule calendar events
google added image-to-video generation to its gemini app
xai released grok 4, its latest flagship ai model
youtube replaced its trending page with category-specific charts, like top music videos, top podcast shows, and top movie trailers
bluesky launched customizable notifications
mastodon is launching quote posts
🤔 hmmm…
cameo released candl, a birthday planning app with reminders for friends’ birthdays. this feels like too small of a swing for cameo given their massive decline in popularity over recent years (per semrush, website traffic down 80% since peaking in june 2021)
openai is testing study together, a new feature in chatgpt that seems focused on interactive learning. it’s a bit unclear to me what problem they’re trying to solve here
jack dorsey released bitchat, a bluetooth-based, encrypted messaging app. idc at all about privacy tbh, but sounds nice for all my tin foil hat homies out there
bytedance is launching a us-specific version of capcut to comply with tiktok divestment laws. smh man #freetiktok
that’s it for this week; thanks for reading. if you enjoyed this issue, please consider sharing it with a friend so i can become famous and quit my job.
love, dj