New web browsers arrive on the scene quite regularly, some promising to revolutionise the way we search or work and some optimistically even see themselves as a successor to Google’s Chrome.
Chrome currently has 72% market share, Safari has 13.9%, Edge 5% and Firefox 2%. This shows the enormity of the challenge for anyone wanting to become ‘top dog’.
AI powered or with AI Assistant are the latest trend in new browsers and one of these is Comet. Very early days, of course, but I thought it would be fun to give it a try for a few days and see how it performs. A preliminary appraisal in other words.
The Comet browser is built on Chromium and integrated with Perplexity AI technology, and basically works as seamlessly as most mainstream browsers like Chrome and Edge. It supports easy transfer of bookmarks and extensions and offers standard browser features.
It has an AI assistant which is accessible at all times, and is quite capable of comparing, summarizing, and interacting with open web pages. The assistant lives in a sidebar, offering a streamlined workflow. Comet also supports customizable AI shortcuts for routine tasks and questions, though these are generally time-savers rather than game-changers.
There is also a Perplexity App which can be used in any browser if that is what you prefer, but the app does not have the same capabilities. Here, though, we are concerned with the Comet browser.
Comet has a modern interface and an editable home page with widgets (such as weather, notes, clock), although these are limited to nine at the moment.
Information is stored locally, and interaction, technical data, settings and communications are processed on the device. It is reported that security tests show it to be similar to Chrome as far as fingerprinting goes.
Comet uses the Perplexity search engine and instead of just a list of links as one is probably used to with Google etc, many of which are more often than not totally irrelevant, Comet uses Perplexity to provide direct, summarized answers to questions along with ‘source links’.
The Assistant sits in a sidebar and can be easily toggled on and off and you can use voice or text for your questions/search. It is also very much conversational, so you can refine or expand your search or even disappear down a rabbit hole. The Assistant can work away in the background summarising web pages or a collection of tabs, find something in an email, schedule a meeting or whatever you have asked it to do while you get on with other tasks, like making your morning coffee.
In theory, the idea is for the Assistant to perform a variety of tasks for you, such as shopping, suggest a recipe and locate the ingredients and add them to your cart, find the best rated items and buy them for you. I have not tried this yet, and some have stated that not everything goes smoothly so far. However, as stated earlier, it is early days.
What I have tried, fairly successfully, is adding ‘shortcuts’ for the Assistant, such as “Show 2 latest posts from each of my logged in social media apps”. It was successful with X, Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, Bluesky but Instagram tends to ‘fail’. Need to experiment more with these shortcuts as they could be very useful and time-saving.
First impressions are certainly positive and I will carry on experimenting alongside my ‘regular’ browser.
I Like
- Simple, uncluttered layout
- Assistant in sidebar but always easily available
- Not getting page after page of irrelevant search results
- Summarisation feature
Issues
- Does not always play nicely with a VPN, very hit and miss
- There have been reports of the odd security issue so far, so you need to take care (as you always should) and, in my view and certainly for the moment, use a Password Manager (such as Bitwarden) rather than any in-built manager.
Definitely worth giving it a go and I am certain it will continue to improve.