The web grew from a single gesture: the click. Mechanical, compulsive, monetizable. It turned curiosity into data, browsing into market value. But now, some want to rewrite the script—not with a new search engine, but with what’s being called agentic browsing. A different way of thinking about browsers altogether.
Comet, launched by Perplexity, isn’t a tool for accessing the Internet. It’s an agent that moves through it on our behalf. It answers, summarizes, books, anticipates. It handles the dirty work of surfing and returns it clean, concise, conversational. A ChatGPT with a driving license. No more tabs, no more scrolling, no more clicking. The future of online knowledge might no longer pass through us, but through what represents us.
Does it work? Yes—perhaps too well. The risk isn’t getting lost. It’s arriving—everywhere—without ever really choosing the road. The web no longer guides us. It simply escorts us to where it thinks we already wanted to go.

The Browser as Agent, Not Window

Comet looks like a browser, but behaves like an assistant. Built on Chromium—the same engine that powers Chrome—it’s been redesigned to integrate AI down to its core. It doesn’t just render pages: it executes commands, starts conversations, carries out tasks. It can click for you, scroll articles, summarize them in real time. It can help you find a hotel and book it, reading the terms and reviews on your behalf. It can order dinner, send emails, check the weather, and suggest an itinerary. The promise is an uninterrupted, seamless experience where search is no longer an action, but a state.
This model has a name: agentic browsing. The browser is no longer a passive container, but an operational subject. A travel companion that acts, filters, synthesizes. It does so based on your profile, your habits, your prompts. It doesn’t ask where you want to go—it proposes the destination.

From Curiosity to Cognitive Delegation

Comet isn’t just another toy for tech enthusiasts. It signals an epistemological shift: searching no longer means exploring, but formulating. The question becomes the sole creative act; the rest is management, automation, delivery.
Want to know something? It tells you. Want a summary of an article, a video, an online discussion? It serves it up. Want it to book dinner? Done. Efficient, no doubt. But what about detours, missteps, serendipitous errors? Walter Benjamin reminded us that authentic experience takes shape through time, memory, friction. It can’t be reduced to a stream of neatly packaged information. If the web becomes pure service, what remains of discovery?

The Economic (and Ideological) Model of the Non-Click

Is Comet free? Not really. For now, it’s invite-only, with a full version priced at $200 a year. No ads, no tracking (on paper), but total dependence on a closed ecosystem. Proprietary language models, controlled APIs, invisible mediation.
Yes, we no longer click. But every spared interaction is processed, synthesized, monetized elsewhere. In this model, the web is no longer a mosaic of sources to explore. It’s a filtered stream, managed by those who own the cognitive infrastructure. Your question has value—not for what it asks, but for what it activates.
Who wins? Those who own the models, control the interface, hold the data. Who loses? Maybe small publishers. Maybe lesser-known content. Certainly our sense of agency—the mindful act of searching, now at risk of becoming mere confirmation of a suggestion.

The False Alarm of the End of Thinking

It’s tempting to go apocalyptic here: “AI will make us stupid,” “we won’t know how to search,” “we’ll lose memory.” The same panic that greeted every new medium, from print to television.
But that’s not the point. The point is: what new forms of intelligence emerge when we delegate? And what kind of ignorance helps us survive when information overflows? Comet (and its inevitable successors) doesn’t make us dumber—it makes us more selective. But beware: the more I delegate, the more I must know how to ask. The true skill won’t be finding—but formulating. It’s the quality of the question, not the quantity of answers, that matters.
Comet isn’t the end of the web. It’s one of its most intriguing and intelligent evolutions. It’s where AI stops being a tool and starts becoming a counterpart. But every new interface rewires the way we think.
Perhaps the click was never the issue. Perhaps the issue is that we stopped searching long ago. Social media taught us to receive, not to ask. Thought adapted to the format: short, fluid, predictive. We don’t explore anymore—we scroll. Comet just takes this logic to its next stage. It’s no longer content chasing us—but the answer. The risk isn’t just epistemological. It’s cultural: if we no longer ask the questions, who decides what’s worth knowing?
The future isn’t in the links—it’s in the act of inquiry. And if browsers of the future talk, synthesize, decide—then our job is to return to real questioning. Questions that open, not confirm.