Google has announced that it will speed up Chrome’s update schedule, cutting the release cycle from four to two weeks in what appears to be a clear response to intensifying competition from AI-powered browsers.
While the company does not explicitly mention AI browsers in its press release, the context is difficult to ignore. Google appears keen to reassert its position at the top of the browser market, committing to ship a meaningful milestone in stability, speed, ease of use, or another technical improvement with every update. These biweekly releases will sit alongside the browser’s existing weekly security patches.
The move also reflects the pace of enhancements Chrome has delivered in recent months.
In February, the browser introduced a long-awaited split view for single-screen setups, built-in PDF highlighting, and a one-click Save to Drive button. At the same time, Google has continued to roll out fixes designed to counter newly discovered vulnerabilities in its memory cache system.
Google Chrome remains the dominant force in the web browser market, holding nearly 69% market share across all devices and 65 percent on mobile, according to StatCounter. On mobile alone, the browser has around 2.8 billion users, based on estimates from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
Alongside operating the world’s most widely used browser, Google also maintains Chromium, the open-source codebase that underpins much of the broader browser ecosystem. That means alternatives such as Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi rely on Chromium for much of their core experience. The rendering engine, JavaScript execution, browser architecture, extension framework, and much of the security model are ultimately shaped by Google’s development roadmap.
AI browsers test Chrome users’ loyalty
Not surprisingly, both OpenAI’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet are also built on Chromium. Although each browser can foreground its own chatbot interface, much of the underlying structure remains influenced by Google’s codebase.
OpenAI launched Atlas in October last year to considerable fanfare. At the time, ChatGPT had reached 800 million active users, and there was a strong perception that OpenAI was leading the AI race. Since then, the competitive landscape has shifted, with Google’s Gemini 3 receiving strong reviews and Anthropic expanding its footprint in coding and enterprise deployments.
Perplexity released Comet around the same time, following a short beta period. According to the company, the waitlist for Comet ran into the millions before it opened access to all users in October.
It is still unclear how either browser has performed since launch. In practice, most ChatGPT and Perplexity usage continues to happen via their websites or mobile apps. Even so, the growing sophistication of these chatbots presents a credible long-term challenge to Google, particularly if conversational interfaces increasingly act as a substitute for traditional search.
Not the first challengers to Chrome’s dominance
OpenAI and Perplexity are far from the first companies to challenge Chrome’s position, and they are unlikely to be the last. Microsoft introduced its AI-enhanced Bing experience in February 2023 and later integrated it into Edge. While the move generated a short-term spike in downloads and engagement, interest gradually cooled, and many users returned to Chrome.
Before the current wave of AI competition, rival browsers focused primarily on privacy. Brave launched in 2016 with ad-blocking enabled by default, while DuckDuckGo promoted a similar privacy-first approach.
Whether AI-driven browsers can meaningfully dent Chrome’s dominance remains uncertain. What seems more plausible is that the way users interact with the web continues to evolve, as artificial intelligence reshapes browsing habits or potentially reduces the need for traditional browsing altogether
Also read: Google’s biweekly Chrome plan follows a stretch of security updates addressing high-severity flaws.
