Lazy People Rejoice: Google Chrome's Latest Feature Revolutionizes Browsing Experience

In addition to URLs and searches, Chrome's address bar now allows you to ask questions to Gemini, Google's chatbot. The company is also deploying its extensions in France.

Faced with OpenAI and its formidable ChatGPT, Google has a weapon: its services. Gemini is not yet a renowned name worldwide, but Chrome, Maps, YouTube, Gmail and Android have a good popularity rating. This is an undeniable advantage in the race for generative AI, since Google can suddenly roll out a feature to billions of users. OpenAI does not have this striking power.

On April 30, Google announced it was deploying Gemini, its chatbot, directly in the Chrome address bar. A sentence preceded by a @gemini will allow you to directly query the artificial intelligence, without having to go to gemini.google.com. Ultimately, @gemini could integrate with other services.

Gemini, a friend who wishes you well

With this change, which we imagine will be highlighted in the next Chrome update, Google will make its chatbot even more accessible. Logic would dictate that @gemini would one day become accessible from any web page (to generate text per response), as well as in all Google services. The I/O conference, scheduled for May 14, should say more about Google's intentions in this area.

The mention of Gemini in the address bar. // Source: Capture Numerama

Google extensions are arriving in France, but not the application yet

Another announcement of the day: Google extensions, which allow you to query YouTube, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Flights, Hotels and Maps, are arriving in France. They were available in the United States since September 2023 (when Gemini was still called Bard), but Google took time to adapt them to French.

For further

Google Bard France // Source: Numerama with Midjourney

With this change, Google Gemini becomes a remarkable assistant for planning a trip.

In addition to activity ideas, he can find flights, rooms and YouTube videos of things to see there. Its ability to search emails also makes it more practical than before, with an undeniable advantage over ChatGPT. It's not for nothing that Google is focusing on this aspect.

The appearance of Google extensions, to be activated manually. // Source: Capture Numerama

The only absence of the day: the Google Gemini application, which can replace Assistant on Android, still does not arrive in France. Google is expanding its availability to other countries, but the European Union remains deprived. However, it is possible to circumvent this ban by downloading the APK manually.