
How AI browsers like Perplexity Comet will reshape the internet—and the media
I wrote an extensive review of Comet for The Media Copilot newsletter, but here I'd like to explore the broader implications—not just stemming from Comet, but the whole idea of an AI-powered web browser, because soon we'll be swimming in them. OpenAI is reportedly about to release its own take on the idea, and certainly Chrome won't be far behind given Google's deep push into AI.
Introducing a browsing assistant isn't just a convenience. It has the potential to fundamentally redefine our relationship with the web. AI browsers like Comet represent the first wave in a sea change, shifting the internet from something we actively navigate to something we delegate tasks to, increasingly trusting AI to act on our behalf. That will present new challenges around privacy and ethics, but also create more opportunities, especially for the media.
A new browser dawns
Those old enough to remember web browsers when they didn't have cookies (which let websites remember you were logged in) or omniboxes (which hard-wired search into the experience) understand how significant those changes were. After using Comet, I would argue the addition of an AI companion transcends them all. For the first time you're surfing the web with a partner. The Comet Assistant is like having your own personal intern for what you're doing online, ready to take on any menial or low-priority tasks so you don't have to.
For example, I order most of my groceries online every week. Rather than spinning up a list myself, I only need to open a tab, navigate the store site, and tell Comet to do it. I can command it to look at past orders and my standing shopping list as a guide, give it a rough idea of the meals I want to make, and it'll fill up the cart on its own. Or I could tell it to find the nearest Apple Store with open Genius Bar appointments on Saturday morning, and book a repair for a broken iPhone screen.
You get the idea. Once you start using Comet like this, it becomes kind of addictive as you search for its limits. Book a flight? Plan a vacation? Clean up my RSS reader (it really needs it)? To be clear, the execution often isn't perfect, so you still need to check its work before taking that final step—in fact, with most use cases, it'll require this even if the command is quite clear (e.g. 'Buy it'), which should give most people some relief to their apprehension of outsourcing things they'd previously done by hand.
But I believe this outsourcing is inevitable. In practice, Comet functions as an agent, and while its abilities are still nascent, they're already useful enough to benefit a large number of people. Browser assistants will likely be most people's first experience with agents, and most will judge them for how effectively they perform tasks with minimal guidance.
That will depend not just on the quality of the tool and the AI models powering it, but also how much it knows about the user. Privacy concerns are elevated with agents: think about the grocery example and now extrapolate that to medical or financial information. Can I trust my AI provider to safeguard that information from marketers, hackers, and other users of the same AI? Perplexity has the distinction of not training foundation models, so at least the concern about leaks into training data is moot. But the level of access a browser agent has—essentially looking over your shoulder at everything you do online—creates a very large target.
Nonetheless, the potential for convenience is so great that I believe many people will use them anyway, and not see the leap to agents as much more than the access they already give major tech platform providers like Apple or Google.
Providing informational fuel for agents
This has big implications for the media. If you think about the things we do online—shopping, banking, interacting with healthcare providers—all of them are informed by context, often in the form of research that we do ourselves. We're already offloading some of that to AI, but the introduction of a personal browser agent means that can happen even closer to the task. So if I ask the AI to fill my shopping cart with low-fat ingredients for chicken enchiladas, it's going to need to get that information from somewhere.
This opens up a new landscape to information providers: the contextual searches needed to support agent activity. Whereas humans can only find, read, and process so much data to get the best information for what they're doing, AI theoretically has no limits. In other words, the surface area of AI searches will expand massively, and so will the competition for it. The field of ' AIEO,' the AI version of SEO, is about to get very hot.
The spike in agent activity will also hopefully lead to better standards of how bots identify themselves. As I wrote about recently, AI companies have essentially given themselves permission to ignore bot restrictions on sites when those bots are behaving on behalf of users (as opposed to training or search indexing). That's a major area of concern for content creators who want to control how AI ingests and adapts their content, and if bot activity suddenly becomes much bigger, so does the issue.
Information workers, and journalists in particular, will be able to unlock a lot of potential with browser agents. Think about how many of the software platforms you use professionally are browser-based. In a typical newsroom, reporters and editors will use information and context across all kinds of systems—from a communications platform like Slack to project-management software like Asana to a CMS like WordPress. Automations can ease some of the tedium, but many newsrooms don't have enough resources for the technical upkeep.
With a browser agent, workers can automate their own tasks on the fly. Certainly, the data privacy concerns are even higher in a professional environment, but so are the rewards. An AI informed by not just internet data and the context of your task, but with the goals and knowledge base of your workplace—AND with mastery over your browser-based software—would effectively give everyone on the team their own assistant.
And this isn't some distant, hypothetical scenario—you can do it right now. Comet is here, and though the Assistant sometimes stumbles through tasks like a newborn calf, it has the ability to perform research, operate software, and accomplish tasks on behalf of the user. That rewrites the rules of online interaction. While the amplified privacy concerns demand clearer boundaries and stricter accountability, AI browsers represent a step change in how we use the internet: We're no longer alone out there.

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Android Authority
25 minutes ago
- Android Authority
I tried two new TECNO phones for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised
Ryan Haines / Android Authority As a US-based tech reviewer, I might get access to a lot of different devices, but I often find myself changing between the same few companies because of the limited number of brands that launch here. I'll jump from Samsung to Motorola to Google and back again, over and over, only sometimes getting lucky with a new launch from Nothing to spice things up. So, when I was offered the chance to check out a few recent launches from TECNO — a company I've never explored before — I jumped. I waited (mostly patiently) for the TECNO Spark 40 Pro Plus and Pova 7 Ultra to arrive, and I'm glad I did. For less than $250 each, they're more clever than I thought they'd be, and they live up to the old Android slogan, 'Be together, not the same,' much better than I expected, even if there are some concessions to hit their low, low price tags. The Spark 40 Pro Plus is a simple, smooth, cheap starting point Ryan Haines / Android Authority The tricky part about hopping into a pair of new TECNO launches is that I didn't know what to expect. They showed up, I unboxed them, and I reached for what looked like the more familiar phone first. That turned out to be the TECNO Spark 40 Pro Plus — a 4G-only budget model with shades of everything from the Galaxy S25 to the Motorola Edge (2022) baked into its slim plastic shell and a software experience that reminds me of OxygenOS from just a few years back. At a glance, none of those borrowed ideas might sound all that exciting, but hear me out — those phones all cost significantly more than the $150-180 Spark 40 Pro Plus (price depends on region). So, for TECNO to find ways to bring everything to a budget segment is exciting. The Spark 40 Pro Plus also brings back a waterfall display — a 6.78-inch AMOLED panel with a crisp 144Hz refresh rate — that's almost good enough for me to question why everyone abandoned it in the first place. Just kidding, I still struggled with covering it in fingerprints and accidental presses until I put the phone in its included silicone case, but it adds what I remember of a flagship touch without a flagship price, as this one starts at the equivalent of about $150. The Spark 40 Pro Plus looks a little bit like a lot of my favorite phones without the price tag. I'm also perhaps slightly surprised by how many AI-powered features TECNO packed into its Spark 40 Pro Plus. It essentially has its own version of many of Google's photo editing tools, from an AI Eraser 2.0 to an AI Extender, and supports Circle to Search, suggesting that it's not just TECNO's tools at play. I still prefer Google's editing tools — they have more punch to work with from the recent Tensor chips — but I like that TECNO is trying to bring tools to a more accessible price point. That said, there are a few bits of the Spark 40 Pro Plus that remind me that this is… well, a very cheap Android phone. Its 4G-only Helio G200 processor is only a slight upgrade over the previous Helio G100, and its single 50MP rear sensor feels like a dated choice, mainly because it's flanked by two other rings that look like additional camera sensors, but don't house anything. I would have loved even a simple ultrawide sensor for a bit more flexibility, but I've been pretty pleased by the results at 1x and 2x zoom. Of course, the bright side of the Spark 40 Pro Plus's power-sipping processor is that it can make the most out of the 5,200mAh battery. I've only had to reach for a charger once or twice while exploring the phone, and I've been pleased with the peak 45W speeds. They're the same as Samsung pushes to its flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra, while 30W wireless charging is quicker than I'm used to from most flagship phones, though I wouldn't have hit top speeds without TECNO's proprietary charging pad. I might actually keep using the Pova 7 Ultra as a cheap gaming phone Ryan Haines / Android Authority Once I felt like I had a pretty good feel for the Spark 40 Pro Plus, I decided it was time to switch gears to the TECNO phone I was more excited about in the first place: The Pova 7 Ultra. Dedicated gaming phones are few and far between here in the US — I usually have to hope for the best with something like the OnePlus 13 or Pixel 9 Pro — so I was curious how TECNO's dedicated hardware at a budget-friendly price point of around $230 would handle a few of my favorite titles. Put simply, it handled them pretty well with help from its 12-layer cooling architecture. Unfortunately, due to limited band support, I couldn't pop my personal Verizon SIM into the Pova 7 Ultra to make it a go-to option for Pokémon Go, but I had no problems racing through games while I was at home on Wi-Fi. It conducted its way through Railbound without a problem, let me take control of Warhammer 40,000 Tacticus as smoothly as I'm used to, and kept me from getting wrecked in PUBG Mobile. I'm still not good at the game, but at least it ran pretty well. Ryan Haines / Android Authority However, what caught me about the Pova 7 Ultra was its design. I know what they say about imitation and flattery, and I'm not even mad about it this time. There's no way to avoid the fact that the Pova 7 Ultra looks like a distant Nothing cousin, from its pseudo-transparent back panel to the Status Light that wraps around its triangular camera bump. Like the Spark 40 Pro Plus, that camera bump plays a trick on the eye by housing two cameras (a 108MP primary sensor and an 8MP ultrawide backup) while looking like it has room for a third. Although I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't give the Pova 7 Ultra its full run due to band support, I'm still impressed by what it packs under the hood. It pairs the Dimensity 8350 Ultimate with 256GB of storage and either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, though TECNO likes to claim it has 16GB or 24GB by converting a dash of its storage to serve as extended RAM. Ryan Haines / Android Authority And then, there's the battery. In true gaming phone fashion, TECNO packed its Pova 7 Ultra with a hefty 6,000mAh cell backed by 70W wired Ultra Charge and the same 30W wireless charging as the Spark 40 Pro Plus. I've had a tough time draining the cell through most of my in-home gaming sessions, but I've done my best to get it there so I could use the included 3,000mAh magnetic power bank. Before you get your Qi2 hopes up, though, know that you need a magnetic case to use the power bank, but thankfully, one comes in the box. Honestly, I didn't realize that TECNO was such a chameleon After about a week with the TECNO Pova 7 Ultra and the Spark 40 Pro Plus, I still have to say I'm impressed. No, I won't say that either phone is about to replace the Pixel that has a permanent place in my pocket, but I can see how they punch above their price tags. More impressively, they do it in different ways. Although they both run a very slightly Pixel-like HiOS 15 based on Android 15, the overall software experience is entirely different. It's a pretty standard affair on the Spark, pairing a somewhat iOS-like quick settings menu with a very colorful app drawer full of a mix of Google apps and in-house versions like Game Space, Hi Translate, and the Hola Browser. I'll still probably skew towards Google Translate and Chrome since I've been using them for years, but the Hola Browser interface is cuter than expected. On the Pova 7 Ultra, the same HiOS experience is completely different. Taking another page out of Nothing's book, the team at TECNO rebuilt a few hundred custom icons in a white, black, and orange color scheme and adopted a customized new font that reminds me of a certain other Android skin. It still has essentially the same slate of in-house TECNO apps for you to explore, they just have a bit more of a gaming edge. Both of these phones run HiOS, but the day-to-day experience is different as can be. Of course, we still have to talk about the budget-minded elephant in the room. Although I've had a lot of fun exploring TECNO for the last little while, and I appreciate that it still includes goodies like cases, wireless power banks, and even chargers in the box (with UK pins), it's still tough to hop on board in the US. Limited band support means that you'll mostly have to hunt for a Wi-Fi connection to use your Pova 7 Ultra or Spark 40 Pro Plus, which is a hard sell for a smartphone. I'm also wary of TECNO's update commitment. I wasn't expecting it to rival Google or Samsung with a seven-year promise. Still, the Pova 7 Ultra's two Android updates and three years of security support, and the Spark 40 Pro Plus's two years of security patches are more than a little behind the times. But, like I said, the Pova 7 Ultra starts at just $210 while the Spark 40 Pro Plus is even more approachable at $150 (though prices may vary by region), so either of these devices could find a role as your backup phone once it's run out of updates. Then again, Nothing finally has solid carrier support after three generations of launches, so maybe TECNO is next.

Business Insider
26 minutes ago
- Business Insider
A new type of dealmaking is unnerving startup employees. Here are the questions to ask to make sure you don't get left out.
As a new kind of dealmaking is sweeping Silicon Valley, forcing employees to be vigilant about how much trust they are willing to put in startup founders. Over the past two years, instead of acquiring AI startups outright, Big Tech companies have been licensing their technology or making deals for top talent, with startup employees sometimes getting divided into separate camps of haves and have-nots. Those with the most desirable AI skills reap a windfall while those who remain are shrouded in uncertainty. That recently happened to Windsurf employees after the AI coding company was on the verge of being acquired by OpenAI for $3 billion, but was instead split in half. Google paid billions to hire Windsurf's CEO and top talent, and the hundreds of employees who remained were bought by another startup, Cognition. Unfortunately for startup employees, many investors expect these kinds of novel transactions to continue as the velocity of developments in AI makes companies unlikely to want to wait months or years for regulatory approval. Candidates need to ask tough questions about the founder Given traditional M&A has mostly gone out the window, it is more important than ever for startup employees to do their homework, advises Steve Brotman, managing partner at Alpha Partners. "In light of what we just saw with Windsurf, it's crucial to understand the ownership dynamics," Brotman said. " You don't want to be working 100-hour weeks only to realize your options are underwater or your exit upside is capped. And remember: companies that are transparent and deliberate about governance tend to be better long-term bets, both for your career and your equity." "Ask hard questions about runway, revenue, burn, and investor syndicate quality," Brotman continued. "Who's on the board? Are they structured for long-term growth or a quick flip?" The most important thing candidates should assess is how much they trust the founder, according to Deedy Das, an investor at Menlo Ventures. "Nobody wants to talk about the fact that founders control almost everything that happens in a company, including how you get paid, when you get paid, how the equity vests, and when you can sell the equity," said Das. "It's everything, so having trust in your founder to do the right thing by the team is extremely important." Just as investors would typically research a founder before writing a check to one of their many portfolio companies, prospective employees should ask around about founders whom they could be tied to for years, said Hari Raghavan, cofounder and CEO of Autograph. "They should be doing diligence on whether this is a standup person," said Raghavan. "Do your best to suss out, 'Are these guys going to take care of me?'" Raghavan suggests that founders should sign a written pledge agreeing to treat employees well in terms of stock options and exit scenarios. "These are things that any good founder should be doing, and the vast majority of good ones do, but I think even just establishing that set of rules is a good idea," he said. Prospective employees should not be afraid to "interrogate" a founder on how they are thinking about an exit, according to Jake Saper, a general partner at Emergence Capital. "Ask founders how they would weigh staying independent, a classic acquisition, or a licensing deal that carves out key people," Saper said. "Their answer tells you a lot about the journey you're signing up for." Scrutinizing the fine print has also become more important, said Saper. "Make sure offer letters and stock agreements spell out vesting acceleration, treatment of options, and retention bonuses if only 'substantially all' of the team moves," Saper said. "Those clauses mattered at Inflection and Windsurf, and they will matter again." In 2024, Microsoft hired the founder of Inflection AI, Mustafa Suleyman, and some of the startup's staff to help lead its AI efforts. In June, Meta paid $14 billion for a 49 percent stake in the data labeling company Scale AI and hired its founder, Alexandr Wang, to run its Superintelligence group. Meta also hired some of the startup's researchers. Last week, Scale AI laid off 14% of its workforce, or 200 employees, and revealed it is unprofitable. Finally, Saper says to take a hard look at the underlying business model of a startup to make sure it can last. "Startups with unique data feeds, embedded distribution or clear recurring revenue have leverage to stay independent," Saper said. "If a company's main asset is a brilliant but portable research team, you should assume Big Tech will come knocking."


Tom's Guide
an hour ago
- Tom's Guide
I swapped my Apple Watch Series 10 for a Google Pixel Watch 3 — here's what I liked and disliked
If you own an iPhone and you're fully locked into the Apple ecosystem, then it's hard to look past choosing the Apple Watch as your smartwatch. Whether it's our top smartwatch pick or the number one smartwatch choice for women, it's a tough one to beat. There are other great smartwatches outside of the Apple Watch, including the Google Pixel Watch 3. It's our favourite Android smartwatch and is proof that great Wear OS smartwatches exist. So what would happen if you swapped Apple Watch for Google Pixel Watch to dish out those phone notifications, let you make payments from the wrist, or let the music play sans smartphone? That's exactly what we did to find out if Google's best is a good enough alternative to the Apple Watch Series 10. Here's what we liked and disliked as we did smartwatch swapsies. If there's one area in general I think Wear OS smartwatches struggle in comparison to the Apple Watch, it's with the native fitness and health tracking support. It's generally good in parts, but lacks as a package. That's where the Pixel Watch 3 differs, and that's mainly down to the strong Fitbit integration, which essentially takes care of monitoring daily step counts, motivating you to keep moving during the day, and offers the kind of metrics and insights that are both glanceable and actually useful to pay attention to. A few features stand out particularly on the Pixel Watch. One is sleep tracking, which Fitbit has had quite a head start on Apple, both with tracking and with the level of metrics it can offer. Apple's sleep tracking support is pretty solid, but in contrast to what you get on the Pixel Watch, the presentation of data on and off the watch is a bit slicker. Readiness scores are another feature that's a win for Google over Apple. It's a good example of a metric that's powered by reliable tracking of heart rate and sleep. Once calibrated, these scores can offer a simple heads-up of whether you should work out or take a rest day. Currently, Apple doesn't offer a similar readiness-type score that is a great feature for fitness newbies and more experienced fitness lovers. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. The Google Pixel Watch 3 is hardly a battery powerhouse, especially compared to other Wear OS smartwatches like the OnePlus Watch 3 and many of Mobvoi's dual-display-toting TicWatches. It does manage to squeeze out a little bit more battery than the Apple Watch Series 10, based on my testing time. The raw numbers state the Pixel Watch 3 can last up to 24 hours with the screen set to always-on, or you can switch to the Battery Saver mode to get up to 36 hours. The Apple Watch Series 10 lasts 18 hours, and really will if you keep the screen on at all times. Granted, it's a pretty rapid charger, but it doesn't negate that you definitely do end up having to think about the battery. Especially if you're taking it to bed to track your sleep. While the Pixel Watch 3 isn't immune to similar concerns, it's definitely slightly less of one compared to Apple's smartwatch. Like Apple, it does try to remedy that with some pretty rapid charging support. Apple's smartwatch has remained square since the original Watch and seems unlikely to shift from that angular look. While there's no shortage of round smartwatches, I'd say that the Pixel Watch 3's round look stands out for the right reasons. For starters, it comes in two different sizes, which is great news whether you like a smartwatch to dominate on the wrist or you prefer something that lives a little smaller, letting you strap on additional wristwear alongside it. You're getting a fully circular case design in either a polished or matte aluminium finish, an elegant watch crown, and a bright AMOLED display, and it has those deep black levels you associate with a high-quality colour screen. Combine all of that and you get something that's sleek and really does set it apart from other smartwatches. You certainly can't accuse the Google Pixel Watch 3 of aping the look of the Apple Watch Series 10 or other Apple Watches, and while Apple also gets plenty of things right with its design, so does Google with its own. Apple beats Google when it comes to tracking your exercise. Quite simply, if you want a smartwatch that can closely match the performance of a dedicated sports watch, it's not the Pixel Watch 3 you'll want on your wrist. Take GPS performance, or the fact that it doesn't offer the latest dual-band GPS technology that now appears on a whole host of smartwatches, some of which cost less than the Pixel Watch 3. If you look at the supported sports tracking profiles, there's simply more on offer with Apple's smartwatch. Take swimming as an example, where the Pixel Watch 3 only supports tracking pool swims, while Apple's will track your movements in the open water and do a really good job of it. If you're heading outside to track workouts, Apple gives you maps to view. Some of that mapping is available out of the box, with a host of apps in the App Store that are capable of extending that to other sports. That extensive third-party training and fitness app support gives Apple the upper hand to enhance its sports tracking capabilities. It also has the advantage of letting you pair external fitness accessories like a heart rate monitor, which you cannot do on the Pixel Watch 3. Yes, there's certainly enough on the Pixel Watch to track workouts and offer a satisfactory level of performance as well as a good array of metrics. The Apple Watch Series 10 is a much better performer across most, if not all, fronts. Having Fitbit take care of most of the Pixel Watch 3's fitness and health tracking was a smart move, but you will need to shell out more money, either on a monthly or annual basis, to get the most complete Fitbit experience. Thankfully, features like daily readiness scores, core activity tracking, and health metrics are available in the free version of the Fitbit App. The biggest features you're going to miss out on by not paying up for Premium are the extra analysis offered for sleep and stress data. You also miss out on Fitbit's workout videos and audio-based training sessions, but I'd say that richer sleep and stress insights are the things that most users will most appreciate having access to. Yes, I did like the fact that the Pixel Watch 3 (the larger 45mm version) has a better battery than the Apple Watch Series 10, but it's not by a huge amount. This is still a smartwatch where you have to think about the battery pretty much every day, whether the screen is on at all times, or when using the raise-to-wake gesture support. Having spent time with other Wear OS smartwatches that can go for almost a week without charging, it's frustrating that Google didn't seize the opportunity to make the Pixel Watch 3 go much longer than Apple's Watches, or at least seek parity with the best WearOS battery performers. Now, this is exactly the same criticism that can be levelled at the Apple Watch and its inability to play nice with Android. This dislikable element of using a Pixel Watch is unlikely to change anytime soon. The lack of compatibility across the two biggest smartphone platforms instantly makes using the Google Pixel Watch 3 a restrictive experience for many. If you don't have the luxury to switch between Android phones and iPhones, then that's going to be a pretty major reason to dislike the Pixel Watch 3. 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