When browsers go ChatGPT

Some thoughts on browser wars.

(Uh. Yes. The feature image. When it's about epic wars, summoning Tolkien is mandatory)

Any browser should have a robust chat bot integrated like ChatGPT. To be honest, any software should have it, as that is the unavoidable breakthrough and game changer of the future.

At the moment, the only browser with the highest level of integration is Microsoft Edge, based on the open source project Chromium by Google. Soon, Google Chrome - also based on Chromium - will integrate Google Bard, although Bard is currently in the testing phase and not yet that reliable.
The problem with both, especially Chrome, is that they are infamous for user privacy concerns. To be more precise, both Google and Microsoft have been having privacy issues for a long time. For instance, search for "windows spying data you" on your preferred search engine: what happens is that the shiny Windows OS you have bought has sneakily been taking data regarding yourself and your both offline and online activity - therefore, data that you own - without your permission, and making money on that.
The same goes for Google.

Furthermore, web developers tend to optimise their work for the browser family that has the majority of the market share, to get the most out of compatibility and efficiency. And since that family has been for a long time now the browsers based on Chromium - Chrome and Edge first - developed by Google, the web was not intended at all to be Google.

On the other hand, to date Firefox has not disclosed anything in that regard, and the informal sources I've found are not optimistic.

If you want to have a certain level of ChatGPT integration out of Edge, the best browser extension to date is called ChatGPTBox (https://github.com/josStorer/chatGPTBox#readme), available for any Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chatgptbox/) and Chromium-based (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chatgptbox/eobbhoofkanlmddnplfhnmkfbnlhpbbo) browser. Be aware that it is not a straightforward extension, as you need to understand a little bit the settings, and disable the option to prevent sites from fingerprinting you based on your language preference, which can be quite annoying for those who care about that. Also, it works only with public URLs: unlike Edge, if you open a document saved in your local machine or cloud without making the URL public, the extension will not work.

At least we have it. And, to date, it is the best option available for ChatGPT web page querying/analysis while protecting your privacy with a browser good with that like Chromium itself (https://www.chromium.org/), Brave (https://try.bravesoftware.com/), Kiwi Browser (https://kiwibrowser.com/), Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/) and WaterFox (https://www.waterfox.net/).
All open-source of course like the extension itself, which is a requirement when we speak about transparency.