ChatGPT Atlas

How does this page not immediately address what I assume is everyone's first question?

Is this browser built on Chromium, or is it a completely fresh creation?

I have to assume that because they AREN'T highlighting it that it IS built on Chromium.

Since it’s Mac only, it could be WebKit.

Definitely not a new browser engine.

I wish we would see more WebKit browsers just for more variety. I personally use Safari as my primary browser on my Mac.

Ora is interesting as it's an Arc-like spin using WebKit, but still early days for it.

Why wouldn't it be Chromium/V8-based? New browser engine is multiple developer-years of effort.

99.9% is based on Chromium. Would have taken ages to ship otherwise. It's great to see how much Chromium has lowered the bar for people to be able to ship new browsers.

As a consumer company, I assure you that not everyone’s first question is which browser engine this is built on.

But I thought AI was supposed to be writing 90% of code by now, you're telling me building a new browser engine is still a multi-year, difficult effort?

the browser looks like it is based on Chromium indeed

They hired a bunch of former Chrome engineers, so...

It's built on Chromium - https://help.openai.com/en/articles/12628461-setting-up-the-...

They used Claude code to write it.

It's just Chromium, thinly reskinned.

User agent string says it's Chrome 141.0.0.0

Just seems like not a very smart long-term move to build on it.

Tough to get changes upstream when the majority of engineers working on Chromium are Google devs.

Lots of features you'd hope would be available in Chromium aren't there and have to be implemented manually, but then you need to keep your fork interoperating with a massive, moving target. Safe Browsing, Translate, Spellcheck, Autofill, Password Manager aren't available in Chromium and Google cut unauthorized Chromium browsers off from using Google Sync in 2021 (https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cuts-off-other-chromium...)

There's probably more issues?

No normal human being is asking this as a first question.

That's because it is.

Just do this on the navigation bar: atlas://extensions

I'm not really seeing the alternative here, though. If your main gripe with Chromium is getting patches upstream through the vendor, that's an issue with all the browser engines available to them. Gecko would be an even riskier bet than Chromium, and WebKit verges on being chronically undermaintained on Windows and Linux.

It says currently, so it wouldn't make sense to be WebKit.

Who says they can’t use the OS native browser engine on each platform?

Of course