Ask HN: Why all the sudden people are writing browsers with AI?

I think a lot of people here are kind of concerned that there’s only three browsers now, and overwhelmingly really only two: Google Chrome and Safari for iOS. Internet Explorer is just Chrome now and while I use Firefox it is still pretty tiny in usage stats. I do not consider things like Epiphany/Gnome Web as serious contenders, and even if I did that would still be only one more niche browser. Things without JS support like NetSurf, in my opinion, don’t count at all.

It’s a little scary when a single megacorp has so much power over something ostensibly open like the internet, but it also has historically taken an incredible amount of resources in order to make a browser making it hard for new players to break in. A modern web browser is arguably more complicated than an operating system…hell, it arguably is an operating system. It touches a ton of aspects of computer science, and requires lots of dedicated workers to keep up with web standards.

Because it has been such an intractable problem for so long, it’s an extremely tempting target when the circumstances have changed. Anyone here can basically have a metaphorical intern working as many hours as they want for ~$20-$100/month. A problem that would be impossible for a single person five years ago suddenly seems “almost possible” when you can work at a higher level and have the pesky “code” details taken care of for you.