Companies are so removed from what users want, they only focus on what shareholders want to hear and don’t consider that users will hate it.
But then users use it anyway for some reason. Many people care so little.
It is legislation’s work.
That’s like a cigarette brand marketing themselves as the most cancer-causing.
Oh yeah I’m definitely going to use that. He’s a marketing genius.
Is Chrome not doing exactly this?
Chrome is relatively limited in scope compared to, say, a user on an instance of degoogled chromium just using the same Google services along with all the other browsing they do. The extra data that’s gathered is generally going to be things like a little more DNS query information, (assuming your device isn’t already set to default to Google’s DNS server) links you visit that don’t already have Google’s trackers on them (very few) and some general information like when you’re turning on your computer and Chrome is opening up.
The real difference is in how Chrome doesn’t protect you like other browsers do, and it thus makes more of the collection that Google’s services do indirectly, possible.
Perplexity is still being pretty vague here, but if I had to guess, it would essentially just be taking all the stuff that Google would usually get from tracking pixels and ad cookies, and baking that directly in to the browser instead of it relying on individual sites using it.
Jesus, that escalated quickly…
Ok how long after this browser goes live till we hear it being used by the FBI to track criminals.
some people will see this as a feature to be desired, not a bug
When using my current browser, any guess as to how often I’ve said to myself “I need a browser that spies on me more”?
Beep boop, this is your browser speaking. You have stated that you need a browser that spies on you more one (1) times.
6?
And people would voluntarily use this browser …why?
because they want ads that serve them things they want I imagine
Dumb and dumber will love it, ts,ts,ts. Some nerds…
Nothing wrong with typescript
Hey, look for that browser to fail instantly as no one will use it.
They don’t want people to use it. They want Google to give them a big bag of money so they can integrate it into chrome.
“Help us improve your User Experience by trying as hard as possible to induce to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need.”
This is really good information, now I know to avoid their browser like the plague.
I hate when people post hyperpartisan reporting because it makes me do homework. In this case, you made me listen to almost an hour of a three hour podcast with three techbros chatting about techbro crap in techbro ways. You owe me years of life.
Anyway, so the conspicuously missing context here is he’s asked if they will let go of the subscription model and go after an ad business model instead and he responds “hopefully not” and clarifies that he thinks the AI differentiator from Google search is that it doesn’t feed people ads.
He then transitions into saying that you’d need a super hyperspecialized profile for it to make sense and then maybe it could work but they haven’t figured out long term memory well enough for that, which is when he talks about why they’d want to have a browser to build that hyperspecialized profile.
This is my least favorite type of misinfo, too, because he’s actually kinda saying what they say he’s saying, just out of context. But more importantly, because he says some other shit that is more outrageous, too. For example, when explaining why he thinks the subscription business will grow more than the ad business the way he puts it is that “people see it as hiring someone”, so they’re more willing to spend, and he ponders “how much do people pay for personal assistants and assistant managers and nannies?” and suggests that they’ll provide similar services for cheaper to people who can’t afford human help.
Which may not be as clickbaity and I get he finds it positive-on-the-aggregate, but is certainly some cyberpunk dystopia stuff that didn’t need the out of context quoting to be a thing.
You owe me years of life.
Best I can do is an upvote and a hearty thank you.
Thank you!
Thanks for you sacrifice and service (it does sound like, but it is NOT sarcastic)
Thank you!
There is an implication, though, that they intend to collect as much data as possible regardless of which model they use? And in the article, he isn’t selling any data, I think. Any mention of that?
To be clear, they ARE building an AI-forward browser and he is very plain about collecting a ton of user info. The way it’s presented in context is that they intend to plug it in to their assistant/agent thing and surface relevant stuff to you on searches (which is the potential ad opportunity the article quotes as if it was the sole goal). But yeah, the implication is that they are collecting data regardless, even if the user profile ends up being used to cater AI responses to you specifically, to train models or whatever.
Hearing the guy talk about it I get the impression that he envisions an Apple-like ecosystem where they’re constantly ingesting data and you’re paying them to have their AI services act as a personal assistant and handle purchases and booking for you directly and so on, on top of anwering queries.
I would rather clip my toenails with a rusty chainsaw, myself, but that seems to be the idea.
We need more people like you, thank you
Thank you!
Damn, and I really liked them too. It’s the most accurate LLM I’ve tried and it even accurately cites sources as well (unlike Copilot, which just makes shit up and then cites an unrelated source).
