Google turns tabs into mini apps

Google turns tabs into mini apps

Google is trying to make browser tabs useful again.

The company introduced Disco, a Gemini-powered experiment that can turn a single browser tab into an interactive web app using a feature called GenTabs. Google showed examples like a winter trip planner with Maps, calendar integration, and an itinerary builder, plus things like meal planning and garden layouts, all generated from one page.

This feels like Google admitting that reading piles of tabs is a bad way to plan or understand anything. Instead of competing head-on with AI browsers like Perplexity’s Comet or Edge’s Copilot Mode, Google is leaning on Chrome and reorganizing what’s already open, usually late at night with a laptop fan humming.

If this works, it shifts AI from answering questions to reshaping information into tools people actually reuse. It also raises the bar for web content, since pages that structure cleanly will turn into better apps.

The open question is whether people want smarter tabs, or fewer of them.

Teen screen time is shifting fast

Snapchat is losing ground.

A new Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 shows YouTube is used by 90% of teens, with TikTok and Instagram around 60%, while Snapchat fell from 60% in 2023 to 55% this year. At the same time, 64% of teens say they have used AI chatbots, with ChatGPT alone reaching 59%.

The bigger change here is not which social app is winning, but how quietly AI has become normal. Teens are not just using chatbots for homework. Many are using them late at night, phones glowing, to think through feelings and decisions without an adult in the room.

That makes parental controls and app bans feel slightly outdated. The risk is less about one platform and more about kids outsourcing thinking, comfort, and judgment to tools that do not know them.

The harder question is whether parents are paying attention to the right screen.

Intel reaches for an AI shortcut

Intel is back in the deal seat.

Bloomberg reports Intel is in advanced talks to buy AI chip startup SambaNova Systems for about $1.6 billion including debt, with a deal possibly coming together as soon as next month. SambaNova is based in Palo Alto and has built custom AI hardware that has struggled to break through as Nvidia tightened its grip.

This looks like Intel admitting that its in-house AI chip efforts are moving too slowly for the market it is trying to stay relevant in. Buying a team and a product off the shelf is faster than rebuilding internally, especially when the lights are on late in Santa Clara and competitors are already shipping.

If this closes, it puts pressure on other AI chip startups whose fundraising decks still assume big independent exits. It also signals Intel is willing to spend real money, not just talk, to stay in the AI race.

Timing matters.

Prohuman team

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