Headline & intro
Chrome can now click around the web for you, fill in forms, and even hunt for electricity deals while you make coffee. At least, that’s the promise of Google’s new Auto Browse agent. In practice, as a recent hands-on by Ars Technica shows, you’re still stuck babysitting a jittery robot intern rather than delegating work to a reliable digital assistant.
In this analysis we’ll look at what Auto Browse got right, where it failed spectacularly, and what that tells us about the current state of AI agents, Google’s strategy, and the future of the browser as an automation platform.
The news in brief
According to Ars Technica’s Ryan Whitwam, Google has started rolling out a preview of Auto Browse, an AI-powered agent built directly into Chrome and currently available to paying AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers.
The feature lets users describe a task in natural language—finding a power contract, creating a music playlist, managing PlayStation Store deals—and then watches as the browser agent navigates websites, clicks buttons, and fills forms to complete it.
Ars Technica tested Auto Browse on several everyday tasks: playing the game 2048, turning a radio station’s tracklist into a playlist, extracting PR contacts from Gmail into Sheets, building a small fan website, shopping for an electricity plan in Texas, and managing discounted games on the PlayStation Store.
Results were wildly mixed: from a 10/10 success on the power-plan comparison to a near-complete failure at handling Gmail and Google Sheets. Overall, Whitwam scored the agent at an average of 6.5/10, noting that it still needs frequent nudging and supervision.
Why this matters
Auto Browse is not just another AI feature. It’s Google’s attempt to turn the browser itself into an automation layer for the web. That has huge implications—if it works.
The upside is obvious: anyone who spends their day clicking through repetitive web workflows—filling the same forms, comparing similar offers, sorting long lists of products—could offload that drudgery to an agent. For solo users and small businesses that can’t afford traditional RPA (robotic process automation) or custom scripts, “just describe the task in Chrome” is an appealing promise.
But the Ars Technica tests highlight three uncomfortable truths:
Agents are brittle UI bots, not robust coworkers. Auto Browse gets stuck on hover menus, misinterprets when a game is “over,” and crashes on relatively simple Gmail + Sheets workflows. It behaves more like a clumsy macro recorder than an autonomous system.
Even Google can’t reliably automate Google. The agent struggled with Gmail, Sheets, and YouTube Music—the very properties Google understands best and can instrument deeply. If it can’t reliably operate inside its own garden, how will it handle the messy long tail of the wider web?
Cost and safety constraints cap ambition. Auto Browse refuses to monitor pages for long, doesn’t persist for hour-long tasks, and blocks potentially controversial edits on public wikis. That’s not just technical immaturity; it’s a sign of cost controls and risk management baked into the design.
Winners, for now, are power users who are willing to debug prompts and watch the agent work, plus Google’s AI subscription business, which gains another paid perk. Losers are anyone hoping this would already behave like a dependable “web butler.” We’re not there.
The bigger picture: agents are the new browser wars
Auto Browse is part of a broader shift from chatbots to agents—systems that don’t just answer questions but take actions on your behalf.
OpenAI fired one of the earlier shots with its Atlas agent (cited in the Ars piece), which similarly tries to complete multi-step web tasks. Microsoft is weaving Copilot into Windows, Office, and the Edge browser. Smaller startups pitch “self-driving” browsers and inboxes. Everyone wants to own the layer that does things for you, not just talks to you.
Google’s move is strategically powerful because Chrome is the default door to the web. Embedding an agent there gives Google something neither OpenAI nor many startups have: distribution at planet scale. If Auto Browse becomes good enough, it could:
- Steer users toward services that are easier for it to automate (and where Google has better integration or business interests).
- Make the browser stickier at a time when regulators and rivals are chipping away at Google’s dominance.
- Create a new category of “agent-optimized” web experiences, similar to how “mobile-friendly” or “AMP” pages emerged a decade ago.
Historically, we’ve seen similar transitions:
- Early browser toolbars and extensions added ad-blockers, translators, and password managers.
- Then came auto-fill, password vaults, and payment helpers, automating fragments of workflows.
- Now we’re testing full workflow delegation: “go there, compare, decide, and act.”
Auto Browse’s rough edges echo the early days of voice assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa: impressive demos, but unreliable for anything beyond simple, well-structured tasks. The pattern is familiar—and suggests this will be a multi-year grind, not an overnight revolution.
The European angle: regulation, trust, and competition
For European users and companies, Auto Browse sits at the crossroads of convenience, privacy, and regulation.
First, the stack is highly integrated: Chrome + Google Account + Gmail + YouTube + Sheets. When an agent has permission to read your email, edit your files, and act in your browser, the blast radius of a mistake or compromise grows dramatically. That’s exactly the kind of scenario the GDPR, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the upcoming EU AI Act are meant to scrutinize.
Key questions European regulators will ask:
- How transparent is Auto Browse about what data it reads and what actions it takes?
- Are logs retained, and can users clearly audit or revoke access?
- When an agent mis-clicks—say, changing account settings or accepting terms—who is responsible?
Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Chrome and Google’s AI stack fall squarely into “gatekeeper” territory. Bundling a powerful agent into the default browser will draw attention: does it disadvantage competing services, or steer users toward Google’s own ecosystem (Gmail, YouTube Music, Google Drive) in ways that breach neutrality obligations?
There’s also a competitive opportunity for European players. Privacy-focused browsers (like those popular in Germany and the wider DACH region) and EU-based AI startups can position themselves as “trust-first agents”: slower rollouts, stronger guarantees, more transparent logging. For businesses in Europe—and particularly in regulated sectors—trust may matter more than shaving a few seconds off a workflow.
Looking ahead: from babysitting to delegation
The Ars Technica tests paint Auto Browse as capable but needy. To become genuinely transformative, three things must change:
Reliability and determinism. Right now, the agent can solve a Texas electricity puzzle with flying colours yet fail to correctly populate two rows in Sheets. Enterprises will not trust that. Expect Google to quietly harden paths for common workflows—travel booking, bill comparison, shopping—before pushing more aggressive marketing.
Session persistence and time horizons. Limiting how long the agent can sit on a page is understandable from a cost and abuse perspective, but it kills many useful scenarios: tracking ticket prices, watching radio playlists, monitoring dashboards. A next wave of agents will need smarter scheduling—pausing, resuming, and summarising over hours or days, not just minutes.
Integration over screen-scraping. The Gmail “background tool” hint in Ars’ test is the interesting part. The real win is not teaching an agent to click through UIs; it’s letting it call structured, permissioned APIs under the hood. Expect Auto Browse to increasingly blur into a front-end for Google’s internal services, with less visible page-juggling over time.
On the business side, paywalled access (AI Pro / AI Ultra) gives Google breathing room to iterate without mass public backlash. But the article notes Google is signalling a broader rollout later. That will collide directly with EU rules and antitrust debates.
Users should watch for:
- Clearer permissions dialogs: what, exactly, the agent can see and do.
- Which partner websites start to advertise “agent-ready” experiences.
- Whether alternative browsers on desktop and mobile respond with their own built-in agents or lean harder on extensions.
The biggest open question is cultural, not technical: will people actually trust a browser to act on their behalf without watching? After a few stories of mis-clicks and embarrassing purchases, adoption could stall—or, if the tech matures quickly, we may simply stop doing a big chunk of web drudgery ourselves.
The bottom line
Auto Browse is a fascinating but flawed first draft of Google’s agentic browser vision. The Ars Technica tests show moments of real utility wrapped in layers of fragility, confusion, and human supervision. As an enthusiast playground, it’s already interesting; as a dependable assistant, it’s not ready. The real question for the next two years is whether Google—and its regulators—can turn this from a toy you babysit into an agent you truly trust to touch your data, your accounts, and your wallet.
