alt Hacker NewsWhy is there a search bar? A browser is more than a URL bar and a rendering engine.
Search is a common operation for many people and having a unified entrypoint for different search providers in the browser makes sense.
Chatbots are also quite common now and having a single chat box that users can use with any chatbot provider (even local ones!) is a good feature. If anything it helps break the big players' chances at a monopoly, since it makes switching between providers easier.
Why is it so hard for people to just...not use a feature they don't like. Sure, the popup was annoying, but I still like that it let me know this feature exists. I don't use it now, but it might be useful to me in the future or so I can recommend it to someone who needs something like that.
Google didn't pay billions to Mozilla for a search bar because it increased the visibility of their competitors. A default LLM in the browser is likely to be retained. After all, there is more stickiness to that choice than typing a different URL when you had to choose one.