The AI browser wars are heating up. OpenAI and other AI companies like Perplexity have gotten a lot of attention with their new AI-first and agentic browsers. They’re being positioned as direct competition to Google, which currently holds a 70% share of the market with its Chrome browser. As the incumbent, Google has been slower to respond to the shift toward AI search — integrating Gemini into Chrome, is widely seen as playing catch-up to competitors that were AI-first from day one.It’s understandable, as a $100 billion business is an enormous, unwieldy beast to pivot. That leaves space for the new guys to maneuver, who are essentially starting with blank slates, and free reign for innovation.Enter Neo, released for worldwide general availability today — the next step in Norton’s AI innovation journey, building on its leadership in cyber safety and its bid to deliver the world’s first safe, zero-prompt AI browser. From the beginning, the minds behind Neo made a deliberate choice to focus on a proactive AI assistant rather than chase today’s agentic trends. Even enthusiasts willing to tolerate the risks face too much unpredictability, along with new safety and privacy concerns.Howie Xu, chief AI & innovation officer at Gen, describes Neo as a browser built to help before you ask — delivering on-page, in-flow support through summaries, reminders, and context-aware suggestions without prompts or extra steps.”It’s like having a highly intelligent assistant sitting next to me, helping me absorb and process information much more broadly, much faster, much deeper,” Xu says. “That assistant is …
