First They Came for Search

The pattern is almost boring at this point. First the ChatGPT app eats into Google Search — slowly, then all at once, the kind of thing that gets noticed by everyone except the people whose job it is to notice it. Now there's an Android app, and the thing it apparently wants to be is Chrome.

A browser. They're coming for the browser.

Which would be remarkable if it weren't completely predictable — Google's entire empire is a distribution system for search revenue, and if you already replaced the search, the browser is just the next door you kick in. The Android app is the key under the mat.

The timing is something, though. Grok 3 is either out or about to be, and Sonnet 3.7 is sitting right there, and everyone is racing to be the thing you reach for first — the ambient layer between you and the internet. Not the smartest model. The most present one.

Google built that position over twenty years. The assumption was it was structural, load-bearing, basically geological.

Turns out it was just a habit.