Google officially launched "Gemini in Chrome," which integrates its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Gemini into its Chrome browser, in Korea on the 21st. As ChatGPT's emergence has cracked Google's dominance in the search market, the company rolled out the AI search service it developed in response to the Korean market as well. With the arrival of Gemini in Chrome, domestic search and portal players such as Naver are on high alert.
Google said it introduced Gemini in Chrome in Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries including Korea, Japan and Singapore on the same day. Gemini in Chrome is a service that allows Chrome browser users to bring up Gemini directly in a side panel without opening a new webpage. It was first launched in the United States in September last year. Last month, Google expanded the service to Canada, New Zealand and India, while also broadening language support to more than 50 languages. Now, it has extended service coverage even further.
Gemini in Chrome can be seen as an attempt to transform Chrome into an "agent browser equipped with AI." Desktop and iOS users can access the service by clicking the "Ask Gemini" button in the upper right corner of the Chrome browser. Because Gemini directly views the user's webpage screen, users can ask questions and request tasks right away without having to enter a website address in the chat window.
The ability to use Google services such as Gmail, Maps, Calendar and YouTube together is regarded as a key strength of Gemini in Chrome. Users can send emails through Gmail without leaving the page and summarize the YouTube video they are watching. With Google's image generation AI "Nano Banana 2" built in, users can convert images appearing on the browser directly through the chat window and compare and analyze information across multiple tabs at once. "The goal of this feature is to finish within a single tab in just a few minutes what previously took more than 20 minutes of switching between multiple tabs," said Charmaine DeSilva, product lead for Google Chrome.
Google's push to bolster Chrome can be interpreted as an extension of a trend in which search providers have been upgrading their services since the rise of generative AI chatbots. According to U.S. IT firm FirstPageSage, Google's search market share this month stood at 77.9%, a gap of 60.3 percentage points over ChatGPT's 17.6%. The gap reached 90 percentage points as recently as 2023 but has narrowed significantly in about three years. In response, Google has been pursuing changes, such as unveiling the "AI Overviews" feature that summarizes search results in 2024.
In particular, when Perplexity and OpenAI each introduced AI-powered web browsers named "Comet" and "Atlas" last year, Google struck back immediately by releasing Gemini in Chrome. Combining Google with Gemini can produce a "lock-in" effect that keeps users within the Google ecosystem longer. According to U.S. IT outlet TechCrunch, Google ultimately aims to deliver agent capabilities through Gemini in Chrome that extend to personal data utilization and product purchases.
Naver, Korea's top search provider, also began seriously layering AI technology onto its services last year to respond to the exodus from portals. A representative example is the launch last March of "AI Briefing," Naver's counterpart to Google's AI Overviews. Naver is taking steps such as diversifying briefing formats, with the goal of applying AI Briefing to up to 40% of all searches this year. Starting with the unveiling of "Shopping Agent," which assists shopping in a chatbot format, in February, the company is also working to introduce agents across all of its services.
Naver's "AI Tab," set to launch in the first half of this year, is expected to be the core technology of its search upgrade. Naver envisions letting users handle everything from browsing and reservations to payment within the AI Tab by tapping its own services such as Shopping, Place and Pay. In the longer term, Naver also plans to combine the AI Tab with its own browser, Whale. Although Whale's domestic browser market share was only 9.32% as of last month based on StatCounter and InternetTrend data, Naver's search share stands at a high 63.4%, raising expectations for synergy. Meanwhile, AI startup Upstage is expected to infuse its AI technology into Daum and transform it into an AI portal once its acquisition of Daum is completed.
