As browser wars heat up, Chrome adds new productivity features

As AI companies and startups push their way into the web browser market, the world’s biggest browser, Google Chrome, is rolling out a handful of new features. The company on Thursday announced the official launch of a trio of options, including Split View, PDF annotations, and a Save to Google Drive feature, designed to more deeply integrate Chrome with one of Google’s other online services.

While these particular additions aren’t focused on AI, Google already integrated its Gemini AI assistant into Chrome. The move was made in response to the increased competition from AI providers like OpenAI and Perplexity, which are dabbling in agentic browsers. These so-called browser wars have pushed Google to be less stagnant in terms of developing and releasing more consumer-facing features.

With Split View, multitasking in Chrome has become easier as the feature puts two pages side-by-side in the same tab. This lets you work across two web pages or watch a video while taking notes, among other things. To use the feature, you’ll drag a tab to the left or right edge of the browser window or right-click a link and select “Open Link in Split View.” The tabs will automatically snap into place. When no longer needed, you can exit the Split View layout via an option found via a right-click.

Another practical addition is the PDF annotations feature, which lets you add notes to a PDF or highlight its text from the browser. This means you don’t have to download the PDF and then open it in another application to work with its content. The option, a long time coming, could make it much simpler to do basic PDF tasks, like digitally signing a document, filling out a form, making notes within a file or personal document, and more.

Finally, the new Save to Google Drive feature will allow you to save any PDF directly to your Google Drive account, instead of your computer, where it may get lost. When using this feature, the saved files will appear in a Saved from Chrome folder in your Drive, making them easy to find.

Today’s update follows the expansion of Gemini and other agentic features to Chromebook users last month. And soon, Chrome is poised to adopt another change that was first spearheaded by its competitors: support for vertical tabs. (Tech-savvy users can even enable that option now, in an experimental phase, by changing a flag.)

This reimagined way to organize open tabs was one of the flagship features in The Browser Company’s first alternative browser, Arc, and is now found in its AI browser, Dia. By adding this feature and the others, Google hopes to give Chrome users fewer reasons to switch.