"California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the 'California Opt Me Out Act', which will require web browsers to include an easy, universal way for users to opt out of data collection and sales," reports the blog 9to5Mac: [The law] requires browsers to provide a clear, one-click mechanism for Californians to opt out of data sharing across websites. The bill reads: "A business shall not develop or maintain a browser that does not include functionality configurable by a consumer that enables the browser to send an opt-out preference signal to businesses with which the consumer interacts through the browser...." Californians will need patience, though, as the law doesn't take effect until January 1, 2027.
Americans in some states — including California, Texas, Colorado, New Jersey and Maryland — "have the option to make those opt-out demands automatic whenever they surf the web," reports the Washington Post. "But they can only do so if they use small browsers that voluntarily offer that option, such as DuckDuckGo, Firefox and Brave. What's new in California's law is that all browsers must give people the same option." That means soon in California, just using Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari and Microsoft's Edge can command companies not to sell your data or pass it along for ad targeting... It's an imperfect but potent and simple way to flex privacy rights — and becomes even more powerful with another simple privacy measure in California. Starting on January 1, California residents can fill out an online form once to completely and repeatedly wipe their data from hundreds of data brokers that package your personal information for sale.
But their article also suggests other ways readers can "try a one-click privacy option now."

• "[S]ome national companies respect one-click privacy opt-out requests from everyone... This happens automatically if you use DuckDuckGo and Brave. You need to change a setting with Firefox."

• "Download Privacy Badger: The software from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a consumer privacy advocacy group, works in the background to order websites not to sell information they're collecting about you."

• "Use Permission Slip from Consumer Reports. Give the app basic information, and it will help you do much of the legwork to tell companies not to sell your information or to delete it, if you have the right to do so."

Google is introducing a new Chrome browser feature for Android and desktop users that automatically turns off notifications for websites that you're already ignoring. From a report: Chrome's Safety Check feature already provides similar functionality for camera access and location tracking permissions.

This new auto-revocation feature builds on a similar Android feature that already makes it easier for Chrome users to unsubscribe from website notifications they don't care about with a single tap. The feature doesn't revoke notifications for any web apps installed on the device, and permissions will only be disabled for sites that send a lot of notifications that users rarely engage with. Less than one percent of all web notifications in Chrome currently receive any interaction from users, according to Google, often making them more distracting than helpful.

"We've decided to support image-based search," announced the product manager for Firefox Search. Powered by the AI-driven Google Lens search technology, they promise the new feature offers "a frictionless, fast, and a curiosity-sparking way to (as Google puts it) 'search what you see'." With just a right-click on any image, you'll be able to:

- Find similar products, places, or objects
- Copy, translate, or search text from images
- Get inspiration for learning, travel, or shopping

Look for the new "Search Image with Google Lens" option in your right-click menu (tagged with a NEW badge at first). This is a desktop-only feature, and it will start gradually rolling out worldwide. Note: Google must be set as your default search engine for this feature to appear.

We'll be listening closely to your feedback as we roll it out. Some of the things we're wondering about:

Does the placement in the context menu align with your expectations?
Would you prefer the option to choose your visual search provider?
Where else would you like entry points to visual search (e.g. when you open a new tab, in the address bar, on mobile devices, etc.)

We can't wait to hear your thoughts as the rollout begins!
Some thoughts from WebProNews: Mozilla emphasizes that this is an opt-in feature, giving users control over activation, which aligns with the company's longstanding commitment to privacy and user agency.

Yet, for industry observers, this partnership with Google raises intriguing questions about competitive dynamics in the browser space, where Firefox has historically positioned itself as an independent alternative to Chrome... This move comes at a time when browsers are increasingly becoming platforms for AI-driven enhancements, as evidenced by recent updates in competitors like Microsoft's Edge, which integrates Copilot AI. Mozilla's decision to leverage Google Lens rather than developing an in-house solution could be seen as a pragmatic step to accelerate feature parity, especially given Firefox's smaller market share. Insiders note that by tapping into established technologies, Mozilla can focus resources on core strengths like privacy protections, potentially attracting users disillusioned with data-heavy ecosystems... While mobile users might feel left out, the phased rollout over the next few weeks allows for feedback loops through community channels, a hallmark of Mozilla's open-source ethos.

Data from similar integrations in other browsers suggests visual search can boost engagement by 15-20%, per industry reports, though Mozilla has not disclosed specific metrics yet... Looking ahead, Mozilla's strategy appears geared toward incremental innovations that bolster user retention without alienating its privacy-focused base. If successful, this could help Firefox claw back some ground against Chrome's dominance, estimated at over 60% market share. For now, the feature's gradual deployment invites ongoing dialogue, underscoring Mozilla's community-driven model in an industry often criticized for top-down decisions.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told attendees at yesterday's Snapdragon Summit opening keynote that he has seen Google's merged Android-ChromeOS platform for PCs. Speaking alongside Google's head of platforms and devices Rick Osterloh, Amon said the software "delivers on the vision of convergence of mobile and PC" and that he "can't wait to have one."

Osterloh confirmed Google is building a common technical foundation for PCs and desktop computing systems that combines Android and ChromeOS. The platform will include Gemini, the full Android AI stack, all Google applications and the Android developer community. "I've seen it, it is incredible," replied Amon excitedly. "It delivers on the vision of convergence of mobile and PC. I can't wait to have one."

An anonymous reader shared this article from the Washington Post: A student taking an online quiz sees a button appear in their Chrome browser: "homework help." Soon, Google's artificial intelligence has read the question on-screen and suggests "choice B" as the answer. The temptation to cheat was suddenly just two clicks away Sept. 2, when Google quietly added a "homework help" button to Chrome, the world's most popular web browser. The button has been appearing automatically on the kinds of course websites used by the majority of American college students and many high-schoolers, too. Pressing it launches Google Lens, a service that reads what's on the page and can provide an "AI Overview" answer to questions — including during tests.

Educators I've spoken with are alarmed. Schools including Emory University, the University of Alabama, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley have alerted faculty how the button appears in the URL box of course sites and their limited ability to control it.

Chrome's cheating tool exemplifies Big Tech's continuing gold rush approach to AI: launch first, consider consequences later and let society clean up the mess. "Google is undermining academic integrity by shoving AI in students' faces during exams," says Ian Linkletter, a librarian at the British Columbia Institute of Technology who first flagged the issue to me. "Google is trying to make instructors give up on regulating AI in their classroom, and it might work. Google Chrome has the market share to change student behavior, and it appears this is the goal."

Several days after I contacted Google about the issue, the company told me it had temporarily paused the homework help button — but also didn't commit to keeping it off. "Students have told us they value tools that help them learn and understand things visually, so we're running tests offering an easier way to access Lens while browsing," Google spokesman Craig Ewer said in a statement.

Google has added Gemini features to Chrome for all desktop users in the US browsing in English following a limited release to paying subscribers in May. The update introduces a Gemini button in the browser that launches a chatbot capable of answering questions about page content and synthesizing information from multiple tabs. Users can remove the Gemini sparkle icon from Chrome's interface.

Google will add its AI Mode search feature to Chrome's address bar before September ends. The feature will suggest prompts based on webpage content but won't replace standard search functionality. Chrome on Android already includes Gemini features. The company plans to add agentic capabilities in coming months that would allow Gemini to perform tasks like adding items to online shopping carts by controlling the browser cursor.

The blog OMG Ubuntu notes that Microsoft Copilot chatbot support has been added in the latest Firefox Nightly builds. "Firefox's sidebar already offers access to popular chatbots, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Le Chat's Mistral and Google's Gemini. It previously offered HuggingChat too." As the testing bed for features Mozilla wants to add to stable builds (though not all make it — eh, rounded bottom window corners?), this is something you can expect to find in a future stable update... Copilot in Firefox offers the same features as other chatbots: text prompts, upload files or images, generate images, support for entering voice prompts (for those who fancy their voice patterns being analysed and trained on). And like those other chatbots, there are usage limits, privacy policies, and (for some) account creation needed. In testing, Copilot would only generate half a summary for a webpage, telling me it was too long to produce without me signing in/up for an account.

On a related note, Mozilla has updated stable builds to let third-party chatbots summarise web pages when browsing (in-app callout alerts users to the 'new' feature). Users yet to enable chatbots are subtly nudged to do so each time they right-click on web page. [Between "Take Screenshot" and "View Page Source" there's a menu option for "Ask an AI Chatbot."] Despite making noise about its own (sluggish, but getting faster) on-device AI features that are privacy-orientated, Mozilla is bullish on the need for external chatbots.
The article suggests Firefox wants to keep up with Edge and Chrome (which can "infuse first-party AI features directly.") But it adds that Firefox's nightly build is also testing some non-AI features, like new task and timer widgets on Firefox's New Tab page. And "In Firefox Labs, there are is an option to enable JPEG XL support, a super-optimised version of JPEG that is gaining traction (despite Google's intransigence).

Other Firefox news:

• There's good news "for users still clinging to Windows 7," writes the Register. Support for Firefox Extended Support Release 115 "is being extended until March 2026."

• Google "can keep paying companies like Mozilla to make Google the default search engine, as long as these deals aren't exclusive anymore," reports the blog It's FOSS News. (The judge wrote that "Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial — in some cases, crippling — downstream harms to distribution partners..." according to CNBC — especially since the non-profit Mozilla Foundation gets most of its annual revenue from its Google's search deal.)

• Don't forget you can now search your tabs, bookmarks and browsing history right from the address bar with keywords like @bookmarks, @tabs, and @history. (And @actions pulls up a list of actions like "Open private window" or "Restart Firefox").

Atlassian said it has agreed to acquire The Browser Co., a startup that offers a web browser with AI features, for $610 million in cash. CNBC: The companies aim to close the deal in Atlassian's fiscal second quarter, which ends in December. Established in 2019, The Browser Co. has gone up against some of the world's largest companies, including Google, with Chrome, and Apple, which includes Safari on its computers running MacOS. The startup debuted Arc, a customizable browser with a built-in whiteboard and the ability to share groups of tabs, in 2022.

The Dia browser, a simpler option that allows people to chat with an AI assistant about multiple browser tabs at once, became available in beta in June. Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said he sees shortcomings in the most popular browsers for those who do much of their work on computers. Further reading: Atlassian Buying The Browser Company Feels Like a Waste of Money.

Critics are denouncing Tuesday's antitrust remedies ruling against Google, calling them inadequate to restore search market competition. DuckDuckGo said the court's decision allows Google to continue using its monopoly to hold back competitors in AI search.

The Open Markets Institute called it "pure judicial cowardice" that leaves Google's power "almost fully intact." Senator Amy Klobuchar said the limited remedies demonstrate why Congress needs to pass legislation stopping dominant platforms from preferencing their own products. The News/Media Alliance criticized Judge Amit Mehta for failing to address Google forcing publishers to provide content for AI offerings to remain in search results.

Chrome has extended its dominance in the browser wars, surpassing 70% market share on desktops while Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Opera trail far behind. Neowin reports: According to [Statcounter], in August 2025, Chrome kept on increasing its overwhelming market share, which is now above the 70% mark (70.25%, to be precise) in the desktop browser market. The gap between Chrome and its closest competitor, Microsoft Edge, is immense, with Edge holding just 11.8% (+0.01 points over the previous month). Apple's Safari is third with 6.34% (+1.04 points); Firefox has 4.94% (-0.36 points); and Opera is fifth with a modest 2.06% market share (-0.13 points).

Things look similar on the mobile side of the market, with Google Chrome having 69.15% (+1.92 points) and Safari being second with 20.32% (-2.2 points). Samsung Internet is third with 3.33% (-0.17 points). As for Microsoft Edge, its mobile share is only 0.59% (+0.06 points). The findings can be found here.

A federal judge spared Google from the harshest penalties in its antitrust case. The search giant can keep Chrome and avoid breaking up Android, but it has been barred from exclusive contracts and ordered to limit data sharing with rivals. CNBC reports: U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the most severe consequences that were proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice, including selling off its Chrome browser, which provides data that helps its advertising business deliver targeted ads. "Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment," the decision stated. "Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints."

The company can make payments to preload products, but it cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision stated. The DOJ asked Google to stop the practice of "compelled syndication," which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. [...] The judge ordered the parties to meet by September 10th for the final judgement.

"Google will not be barred from making payments or offering other consideration to distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or its GenAI products. Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial -- in some cases, crippling -- downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban." [...] Google said it will appeal the ruling, which would delay any potential penalties. Mehta ruled Tuesday that Google will have to make available certain search index data and user interaction data though "not ads data." The court narrowed the datasets Google will be required to share and said they must occur on "ordinary commercial terms that are consistent with Google's current syndication services."

AI startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to purchase Google's Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant's web-search dominance. From a report: Perplexity's offer is significantly more than its own valuation, which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall Street Journal that several investors including large venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full.

Estimates of Chrome's enterprise value vary widely but recent ones have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is weighing whether to force Google to sell the browser as a means of weakening Google's stranglehold on web search. Mehta last year ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market and is expected to rule this month on how to restore competition.

Google will discontinue Steam for Chromebook Beta on January 1, 2026, removing all installed games from devices after that date. The beta launched in March 2022 as an alpha before expanding to beta status in November 2022 with reduced hardware requirements of Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 processors and 8GB RAM. The program never progressed beyond beta testing despite supporting 99 compatible Linux-based titles through its three-year run.

In a report published Monday, Cloudflare accused Perplexity of deploying undeclared web crawlers that masquerade as regular Chrome browsers to access content from websites that have explicitly blocked its official bots. Since then, Perplexity has publicly and loudly announced that Cloudflare's claims are baseless and technically flawed. "This controversy reveals that Cloudflare's systems are fundamentally inadequate for distinguishing between legitimate AI assistants and actual threats," says Perplexity in a blog post. "If you can't tell a helpful digital assistant from a malicious scraper, then you probably shouldn't be making decisions about what constitutes legitimate web traffic."

Perplexity continues: "Technical errors in Cloudflare's analysis aren't just embarrassing -- they're disqualifying. When you misattribute millions of requests, publish completely inaccurate technical diagrams, and demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern AI assistants work, you've forfeited any claim to expertise in this space."

AI startup Perplexity is deploying undeclared web crawlers that masquerade as regular Chrome browsers to access content from websites that have explicitly blocked its official bots, according to a Cloudflare report published Monday. When Perplexity's declared crawlers encounter robots.txt restrictions or network blocks, the company switches to a generic Mozilla user agent that impersonates "Chrome/124.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" running on macOS, the web infrastructure firm reported.

Cloudflare engineers tested the behavior by creating new domains with robots.txt files prohibiting all automated access. Despite the restrictions, Perplexity provided detailed information about the protected content when queried, while the stealth crawler generated 3-6 million daily requests across tens of thousands of domains. The undeclared crawler rotated through multiple IP addresses and network providers to evade detection.

Microsoft has discontinued Windows 11 SE, its education-focused operating system designed for low-cost school PCs. The company confirmed that Windows 11 SE will not receive the upcoming version 25H2 update and support will end in October 2026, including security updates and technical assistance.

Launched in 2021 as a Chrome OS competitor, Windows 11 SE featured artificial limitations like reduced multitasking capabilities and restricted app installation to create a simplified experience for students. The discontinuation leaves Microsoft without a dedicated lightweight Windows edition for the education market, where Chromebooks have gained significant popularity over the past decade.

Mozilla will ship WebGPU support in Firefox 141 when the browser launches July 22, bringing graphics processing capabilities that Chrome users have had since 2023. The initial release supports Windows only, with Mac, Linux, and Android planned for the coming months.

WebGPU provides web content direct access to graphics processors for high-performance computation and rendering in games and complex 3D applications. Chrome gained WebGPU support with version 113 in 2023, while Safari 26 is expected to add the feature this fall. Firefox's implementation uses the WGPU Rust crate, which translates web requests into native commands for Direct3D 12, Metal, or Vulkan.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas warned young entrepreneurs that tech giants will "copy anything that's good" during a talk at Y Combinator's AI Startup School, telling founders they must "live with that fear." Srinivas said that companies raising tens of billions need to justify capital expenditures and search for new revenue streams.

Perplexity pioneered web-crawling chatbots when it launched its answer engine in December 2022, but Google's Bard added internet-crawling three months later, followed by ChatGPT in May 2023 and Anthropic's Claude in March 2025. The competition has extended to browsers, with Perplexity launching its Comet browser on July 9 and Reuters reporting that OpenAI is developing a web browser to challenge Google Chrome. Perplexity's communications head Jesse Dwyer said larger companies will "drown your voice."

"Firefox is dead to me," wrote Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols last month for The Register, complaining about everything from layoffs at Mozilla to Firefox's discontinuation of Pocket and Fakespot, its small market share, and some user complaints that the browser might be becoming slower. But a new rebuttal (also published by The Register) argues instead that Mozilla just has "a management layer that doesn't appear to understand what works for its product nor which parts of it matter most to users..."

"Steven's core point is correct. Firefox is in a bit of a mess — but, seriously, not such a bad mess. You're still better off with it — or one of its forks, because this is FOSS — than pretty much any of the alternatives." Like many things, unfortunately, much of computing is run on feelings, tradition, and group loyalties, when it should use facts, evidence, and hard numbers. Don't bother saying Firefox is getting slower. It's not. It's faster than it has been in years. Phoronix, the go-to site for benchmarks on FOSS stuff, just benchmarked 21 versions, and from late 2023 to now, Firefox has steadily got faster and faster...

Ever since Firefox 1.0 in 2004, Firefox has never had to compete. It's been attached like a mosquito to an artery to the Google cash firehose... Mozilla's leadership is directionless and flailing because it's never had to do, or be, anything else. It's never needed to know how to make a profit, because it never had to make a profit. It's no wonder it has no real direction or vision or clue: it never needed them. It's role-playing being a business. Like we said, don't blame the app. You're still better off with Firefox or a fork such as Waterfox. Chrome even snoops on you when in incognito mode...

One observer has been spectating and commentating on Mozilla since before it was a foundation — one of its original co-developers, Jamie Zawinksi... Zawinski has repeatedly said: "Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?"

"In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

— Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
— Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
— There is no 3."


Perhaps this is the only viable resolution. Mozilla, for all its many failings, has invented a lot of amazing tech, from Rust to Servo to the leading budget phone OS. It shouldn't be trying to capitalize on this stuff. Maybe encourage it to have semi-independent spinoffs, such as Thunderbird, and as KaiOS ought to be, and as Rust could have been. But Zawinski has the only clear vision and solution we've seen yet. Perhaps he's right, and Mozilla should be a nonprofit, working to fund the one independent, non-vendor-driven, standards-compliant browser engine.

Over 240 browser extensions with nearly a million total installs have been covertly turning users' browsers into web-scraping bots. "The extensions serve a wide range of purposes, including managing bookmarks and clipboards, boosting speaker volumes, and generating random numbers," reports Ars Technica. "The common thread among all of them: They incorporate MellowTel-js, an open source JavaScript library that allows developers to monetize their extensions." Ars Technica reports: Some of the data swept up in the collection free-for-all included surveillance videos hosted on Nest, tax returns, billing invoices, business documents, and presentation slides posted to, or hosted on, Microsoft OneDrive and Intuit.com, vehicle identification numbers of recently bought automobiles along with the names and addresses of the buyers, patient names and the doctors they saw, travel itineraries hosted on Priceline, Booking.com, and airline websites, Facebook Messenger attachments and Facebook photos, even when the photos were set to be private. The dragnet also collected proprietary information belonging to Tesla, Blue Origin, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and dozens of other companies.

Tuckner said in an email Wednesday that the most recent status of the affected extensions is:

- Of 45 known Chrome extensions, 12 are now inactive. Some of the extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library.
- Of 129 Edge extensions incorporating the library, eight are now inactive.
- Of 71 affected Firefox extensions, two are now inactive.

Some of the inactive extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library in more recent updates. A complete list of extensions found by Tuckner is here.