Google’s New Browser Promises to End the Tyranny of the Tab – Decrypt

Planning a family vacation usually involves a digital sprawl: a dozen browser tabs for hotels,  flight comparisons, and restaurant reviews across different websites.

It is the kind of chaos that has defined the web work since tabbed browsing was popularized by Mozilla Firefox in 2002.

Today, the Alphabet Inc. unit unveiled Disco, an experimental web browser that aims to end the chaotic tyranny of tabs.

Disco uses the company’s new Gemini 3 artificial intelligence model to transform a cluster of open tabs into a single, interactive application.

The launch marks one of Google’s most aggressive attempts yet to reimagine the web interface that generates the bulk of its ad revenue, signaling a shift away from passive search toward active, AI-driven curation.

At the center of the new browser is a feature called GenTabs. Instead of forcing users to toggle between disparate sites, GenTabs analyzes the active research session—flight logs, weather forecasts, and travel blogs—and compiles them into a bespoke dashboard.

“As our online tasks have grown more complex, we’ve all felt the frustration of juggling dozens of open tabs,” Google said in a statement regarding the launch. The company describes Disco not as a “discovery vehicle” designed to build software on the fly.

The end of tab fatigue?

The premise of Disco is that the browser should be an active agent rather than a passive window.

In a demonstration, Google showed a user researching a trip to Burlington, Vermont. Rather than leaving the user to manage raw information, Disco’s AI scraped the open tabs to generate a unified, interactive map with a built-in itinerary and budget checklist. (People old enough to remember when AAA created maps and related packets of info on paper, called TripTik, will be amused. AAA now offers this as an app, of course. )

Crucially, Disco’s generated dashboards are dynamic. If a user clicks to “book nearby stays” within the generated app, the system pulls real-time data from the underlying websites, blending the utility of a custom app with the live connectivity of the web.

The technology is powered by Gemini 3, Google’s latest large language model released earlier this month.

According to the company, Gemini 3 utilizes a “Deep Think” reasoning mode that allows it to handle complex, multi-step tasks—such as synthesizing a meal plan from five different recipe blogs—with higher accuracy than previous iterations.

A sandbox, not a switch

For now, Google is treating Disco as an experimental sandbox.

The browser is launching as a limited experiment under the Google Labs division, available initially only to macOS users via a waitlist, which you can access here.

Still, the cautious rollout reflects the high stakes involved.

Google Chrome commands nearly two-thirds of the global browser market, serving as the primary funnel for the search ads that constitute the vast majority of Alphabet’s revenue.

Disrupting that interface carries significant risk. By parking Disco in its “Labs” division, Google can test radical interface changes—such as removing the traditional URL bar in favor of a conversational sidebar—without immediately upending the experience for billions of Chrome users.

Likewise, if the new browser takes off, it’ll further reduce traffic to the very content sources that AI cannibalizes, adding one more nail in the coffin of ad-supported websites. Still, the company has high hopes for the new approach.

“The most compelling ideas from Disco may one day make their way into larger Google products,” the company said, hinting that GenTabs could eventually graduate to the main Chrome browser.

The AI browser wars

The release comes as Google faces intensifying pressure from competitors seeking to rethink the browser. OpenAI has reportedly been exploring web-browsing agents, and startups like Arc have gained traction by using AI to summarize and organize web pages.

However, Google’s approach with Disco differs in its “zero-code” promise. The browser builds actual tools rather than merely summarizing information.

Beyond travel, Google demonstrated GenTabs, which created 3D interactive models of the solar system for students, while meal planners were catered to through automatically scraped ingredient lists bundled into a shopping list.