OpenAI has been extremely busy recently, dabbling in e-commerce, social media, and now launching a browser. Emmmm... it has already made enemies with half of the Seven Sisters.

With a trending topic every three days, Dolphin Research can hardly keep up. A few days before the earnings report of $Alphabet(GOOGL.US), let's catch up on OpenAI's release of Atlas last week, an AI browser that claims to kick Chrome to the curb.

In fact, OpenAI's plan to launch an AI browser was leaked by Reuters back in July: OpenAI plans to launch an AI browser in the future, with the company's Operator AI agent built into the browser. This feature will allow Operator to book restaurants, auto-fill forms, and complete other browser tasks.

With the initial idea of seeing how OpenAI would redefine the next generation of browsers by outdoing Chrome, Dolphin Research watched the product demonstration of Atlas. To be honest, it was a bit disappointing, perhaps because the expectations were too high. The success of ChatGPT has made it hard to shake off the idea of OpenAI as a disruptor.

In simple terms, this feels more like a "plugin" on a traditional browser rather than a new generation browser. Apart from the main feature of AI memory storage, the two core functionalities introduced at the launch are AI sidebar plugins and AI agent task completion:

1. AI Memory for Personalized Access

One of Atlas's key features is its memory, allowing users to revisit previously browsed pages at any time. The AI Q&A format also makes this retrieval process simpler.

Storing browsing history might raise privacy concerns among users. Atlas addresses this by offering personalized settings, allowing users to choose an auto-clear mode or set permissions for GPT to store specific pages.

2. Sidebar ChatGPT: Primarily for AI Q&A on the Browsed Page

However, this feature of Atlas is quite common. Dolphin Research has already achieved most of these functionalities painlessly through some third-party AI large model integration platforms' Chrome plugins. It can also seamlessly switch between GPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude, and Deepseek for 360-degree responses from different perspectives. But what puzzles Dolphin Research is that the Atlas product manager, as if discovering a new continent, spent half of the 22-minute product introduction on a detailed demonstration.

2. AI Agent Invocation

Invoking AI agents to complete tasks is somewhat creative. Currently, it can handle simple tasks like filling out forms and complex ones like booking restaurants and downloading files, essentially having the ability to autonomously click on modules on web pages.

However, it is strange that compared to invoking basic applications on the Atlas platform and then using AI agents to complete tasks, it seems that directly integrating GPT into existing applications can achieve the same functionality as Atlas. Unless the task requires cross-application execution, having a unified entry point is indeed better for the user.

The product manager demonstrated quick replies/enhancements to emails and linear task management using Gmail and Google Docs. While this seems normal, placing it in a direct browser competition context is another kind of dark humor. In other words, where does this leave Gemini in Gmail?

3. Google's Influence? Let the Bullets Fly for a While

Although the product is not revolutionary, it is somewhat similar to Google's AI Mode. However, in terms of task completion through agent invocation, Atlas might give agents more autonomy, making the tasks it can handle appear more "complex".

But AI Mode has a drawback: Due to the group's search advertising business model and performance stability, innovation is never fully pushed forward. However, Atlas, starting from scratch, has no such burden. Therefore, while Atlas may have limited impact in attracting users, it can push AI Mode forward, accelerating the transformation of Google's search business.

Just like last night, the timely order from Anthropic could boost Google's stock price. Google has already undergone a period of revaluation. With the advantage of a full-stack AI technology industry chain, Google can use part of the AI valuation premium to buffer the valuation erosion of traditional advertising. If the short-term performance impact is not significant, it might even allow Google to enjoy some positive bubbles (the current pure valuation recovery is almost complete).

This week, Google will face its Q3 earnings test. So far, the forward-looking expectations are still positive, with a market bias towards optimism. While paying attention to the expansion of accumulated orders in cloud services, the market will also focus on the performance of search advertising, looking for any signs of erosion by other AI search platforms, aside from the macro environment.

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