One of the questions I have been pondering lately is whether AI web browsers with integrated chatbots could replace search engines.
To get some perspective on this question, I looked at a recent study by One Little Web that analyzed 24 months of web traffic data (Apr 2023 to Mar 2025) of the top 10 AI chatbots (including ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Perplexity) and the top 10 search engines (like Google, Bing, Yahoo), using SEMrush web traffic data that suggest that is not happening anytime soon.
Key insights include:
1. AI chatbot traffic grew by 80.92% YoY but still trails behind search engines by a factor of 34x.
2. Despite ChatGPT’s massive growth, its daily visits are 26x lower than Google’s.
3. Search engines are bouncing back, fueled by AI integration, with Google and Bing leading the charge.
4. Yahoo saw a 22.5% drop in visits YoY, highlighting a continued decline.
5. Grok, the second-fastest-growing chatbot, has seen an explosive rise, while Perplexity and Claude are growing steadily.
However, the bigger question is not whether chatbots replace search engines, but whether chatbots become an integral part of the browser experience.
One of the most strategic decisions Google ever made was to launch its browser, Chrome. Having already organized the world’s information with its search engine, Google then moved to control the very vehicle people used to access that information.
Recently, Perplexity, the ambitious AI search upstart, just unveiled Comet, an AI-powered browser poised to challenge Google’s stronghold. Much like Chrome before it, Comet aims to alleviate current user frustrations by embedding agent-like behaviors directly into many of our everyday digital tasks.
Consider a simple yet common scenario. When I recently needed to verify a statistic for this article, my traditional workflow involved opening a new tab, typing my query (“ChatBot vs. Search engine market share”), sifting through search results, selecting a promising source, clicking through, and finally locating the data point on the page. Alternatively, if I were to leverage AI, I’d open Gemini or ChatGPT and directly ask this question in a chatbot.
With Comet, the process streamlines dramatically. I begin typing my query directly into a new tab, eliminating the need for an intermediary step of navigating to a separate AI application. By integrating access to your search history, activity logs, and the various logged-in applications, Perplexity’s browser gains a contextual understanding of your ongoing activities.
The overarching vision here is to transform the browser into an intelligent agent, as much as possible. This transformation is a crucial concept that could redefine the role of a browser in the future.
Perplexity is now fielding an impressive 780 million queries monthly, and the company’s value is currently at a remarkable $14 billion. While OpenAI may possess greater scale, Perplexity’s longer tenure in the search domain, coupled with the fact that it doesn’t build its own foundational models, could prove to be a distinct advantage in the browser space, where users often prioritize customization.
Comet isn’t the first AI-powered web browser. In June, The Browser Company, creators of Arc, launched Dia, a browser that converts the omnibox into a chatbot. And this is certainly not the final entrant.
Reuters reports that OpenAI is reportedly just weeks away from launching its browser, which will directly compete with Google Chrome. The ChatGPT-maker has been working on a browser that first surfaced in November 2024. The product aims to change how users find information online, potentially utilizing OpenAI’s agent, Operator.
The Chrome browser—and its contemporaries—are undoubtedly ripe for disruption. Google has so far been relatively slow to integrate Gemini deeply into the Chrome experience. This delay could stem from its intense focus on Gemini’s development, concerns about potential antitrust scrutiny, or perhaps a reluctance to risk its incredibly dominant market share.
Nevertheless, a substantial opportunity exists for an innovator to integrate AI into the browser seamlessly. Making AI-generated answers the default search experience in a browser will accelerate many of the trends we’re already witnessing in content discovery: a dramatic reduction in direct clicks to websites, enhanced engagement from those who do visit, and potentially new ways to develop new ad revenue.
An AI browser with integrated AI chatbots could deliver a seamless experience as part of browsing and change the way we use browsers in the very near future.
Disclosure: Google and Microsoft subscribe to Creative Strategies research reports along with many other high tech companies around the world.
