Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: Opera's new 'fully agentic' browser can surf the web for you

Date: Wed, 28 May 2025 14:50:36 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/operas-new-fully-...

It was only earlier this year Norway's Opera released a new browser, and now
it's adding yet another offering to an already crowded field. Opera is
billing Neon as a "fully agentic browser." It comes with an integrated AI
that can chat with users and surf the web on their behalf. Compared to
competing agents, the company says Neon is faster and more efficient at
navigating the internet on its own due to the fact it parses webpages by
analyzing their layout data.

Building on Opera's recent preview of Browser Operator, Neon can also
complete tasks for you, like filling out a form or doing some online
shopping. The more you use Neon to write, the more it will learn your
personal style and adapt to it. All of this happens locally, in order to
ensure user data remains private.

Additionally, Neon can make things for you, including websites, animations
and even game prototypes, according to Opera. If you ask Neon to build
something particularly complicated or time-consuming, it can continue the
task even when you're offline. This part of the browserΓÇÖs feature set
depends on a connection to Opera's servers in Europe where privacy laws are
more robust than in North America.

"Opera Neon is the first step towards fundamentally re-imagining what a
browser can be in the age of intelligent agents," the company says.

If all of this sounds familiar, it's because other companies, including
Google and OpenAI, have been working on similar products. In the case of
Google, the search giant began previewing Project Mariner, an extension that
adds a web-surfing agent to Chrome, last December. OpenAI, similarly, has
been working on its own "Operator" mode since the start of the year.

Neon, therefore, sees Opera attempting to position itself as an innovator in
hopes of claiming market share, but the company has a difficult task ahead.
According to data from StatCounter, only about 2.09 percent of internet users
use Opera to access the web. Chrome, by contrast, commands a dominant 66.45
percent of the market. That's a hard hill to climb when your competitors are
working on similar features.

It's also worth asking if an agentic browser is something people really want.
Opera suggests Neon is smart enough to book a trip for you. That sounds great
in theory, but what if the agent makes an error and books the wrong
connecting flight. A certain amount of friction ensures users pay attention
and check things on their own.

If you want to try Neon for yourself, you can join the wait list.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/ai/operas-new-fully-...
for-you-145035874.html?src=rss

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