Google introduced throughout Google I/O 2025 that it’s rolling out Challenge Mariner, the corporate’s experimental AI agent that browses and makes use of web sites, to extra customers and builders. Google additionally says it’s considerably up to date how Challenge Mariner works, permitting the agent to tackle almost a dozen duties at a time.
U.S. subscribers to Google’s new $249.99-per-month AI Extremely plan will get entry to Challenge Mariner, and the corporate says help for extra international locations is coming quickly. Google additionally says it’s bringing Challenge Mariner’s capabilities to the Gemini API and Vertex AI, permitting builders to construct out purposes powered by the agent.
First unveiled in late 2024, Challenge Mariner represents Google’s boldest effort but to revamp how customers work together with the web by means of AI brokers. At launch, Google Search leaders mentioned they seen Challenge Mariner as a part of a basic consumer expertise shift, during which individuals will delegate extra duties to an AI agent, as an alternative of visiting web sites and finishing these duties themselves.
For instance, Challenge Mariner customers can buy tickets to a baseball sport or purchase groceries on-line with out ever visiting a third-party web site — they only chat with Google’s AI agent, and it visits web sites and takes actions for them.
Challenge Mariner competes with different web-browsing AI brokers, resembling OpenAI’s Operator, Amazon’s Nova Act, and Anthropic’s Pc Use. These instruments are all in an experimental stage, and TechCrunch’s expertise has confirmed the prototypes to be sluggish and liable to errors.
Nonetheless, Google says it’s taken suggestions from early testers to enhance Challenge Mariner’s capabilities. A Google spokesperson tells TechCrunch the corporate up to date Challenge Mariner to run on digital machines within the cloud, very like brokers from OpenAI and Amazon. This implies customers can work on different initiatives whereas Challenge Mariner completes duties within the background — Google says the brand new Challenge Mariner can deal with as much as 10 duties concurrently.
This replace makes Challenge Mariner considerably extra helpful in comparison with its predecessor, which ran on a consumer’s browser. As I famous in my preliminary evaluation, Challenge Mariner’s early design meant customers couldn’t use different tabs or apps on their desktop whereas the AI agent was working. This sort of defeated the aim of an AI agent — it could be just right for you, however you couldn’t do anything whereas it was working.
Within the coming months, Google says customers will be capable of entry Challenge Mariner in AI Mode, the corporate’s AI-powered Google Search expertise. When it launches, the function will likely be restricted to Search Labs, Google’s opt-in testing floor for search options. Google says it’s working with Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy, and Vagaro to energy a few of these agentic flows.
Individually in the present day, Google unveiled an early demo of one other agentic expertise referred to as “Agent Mode.” The corporate says this function combines net searching with analysis options and integrations, in addition to with different Google apps. Google says Extremely subscribers will acquire entry to Agent Mode on desktop quickly.
At this 12 months’s I/O, Google lastly appears keen to ship the agentic experiences it’s been speaking about for years. Challenge Mariner, Agent Mode, and AI Mode all appear poised to vary how customers navigate the net, and the way distributors work together with their prospects on-line. Net-browsing brokers have large implications for the web financial system, however Google appears able to put all these brokers out on the planet.
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