Our Bureau
San Francisco
Google’s Chrome team has quietly built an experimental new browser that blends web search, AI and app creation into a single experience. The concept, called GenTabs, lives inside a prototype browser named Disco (short for “discovery”) and is being launched as an experiment in Google’s Search Labs.
The idea is simple but ambitious: instead of returning links or chat responses, Disco takes a user’s prompt, opens relevant tabs across the web, and then uses Google’s Gemini AI models to generate a custom, interactive app tailored to the task. Ask for help planning a trip, and it builds a travel planner; ask for study support, and it creates flashcards. Google describes it as search meeting “vibe coding.”
Importantly, Google insists this is not an attempt to replace Chrome. “I don’t think of Disco as a general-purpose browser,” said Parisa Tabriz, who leads the Chrome team. The project began as an internal hackathon experiment and evolved into a testbed for rethinking how people interact with the web using AI.
At the heart of the experience are GenTabs—information-rich, AI-generated interfaces powered by Gemini 3, which can build lightweight interactive tools instead of just producing text. Rather than traditional tabs, Disco organizes work into “projects,” each combining a chat interface, live web tabs, and a generated app that updates as users explore new sources.
In a demo, Chrome innovation lead Manini Roy entered a request to plan a trip to Japan. Instead of responding with text, Disco opened relevant websites and offered to generate an interactive planner. The resulting GenTab included a map, itinerary builder and cited sources, updating dynamically as new tabs were added. The process is designed to be collaborative: users add their own research, and the AI incorporates it.
This emphasis on actively browsing the web sets Disco apart from many AI browsers. Early testing showed users tended to stay inside chatbots, so the team redesigned the system to push people toward opening tabs. “That’s where the grounding comes from,” Roy said. “It creates a virtuous cycle.”
For now, Disco remains an experiment. But by tightly weaving AI with real web browsing, it offers one of the clearest glimpses yet of how the browser itself might evolve in the AI era.
