For years, the URL bar in your browser has done double duty: you can enter a web address, sure, but you can also use it to enter search requests. Now Norton has a new “free” browser, Neo, which adds a third function: AI prompting.

Norton—most famous for its antimalware solutions like Norton 360 Deluxe—is entering the browser market with Norton Neo, an AI-first browser that you can sign up for and join the waitlist. Norton already ships a browser, the Norton Private Browser, which is similar but lacks AI.

Neo replaces the search/URL bar with what it calls the “magic box,” where you can “search, generate, and take action,” according to Norton. It’s not immediately clear whose AI solution you’ll be able to use or whether it will run in the cloud or locally on your PC. When you do search, however, Norton promises that you’ll be able to “peek” at a search result to get an AI-powered summary—and yes, it appears to be a list of links, rather than Norton’s own take on Google’s AI Mode. The Magic Bar will also enable you to perform AI-powered writing tasks, such as drafting an email, directly from it.

There’s another tweak that Norton is making, although I can’t tell how it’s going to work out: tables browsing. “No more tab chaos—Neo organizes everything, so you don’t have to,” Norton promises.

Rather than remove tabs entirely from the AI, Neo will just use AI to auto-group them, according to a related FAQ. Opera One’s Tabs Islands already does this, as does Microsoft Edge, using the “Tab groups” feature.

And yes, there’s an integrated ad blocker, which more and more browsers are integrating natively. Norton says that it will not sell your browsing data, leaving room to use “minimal, anonymized data” itself; it also will block “intrusive ads” and trackers by default. Norton does explicitly say that it will not use your data to train AI.

Norton doesn’t explicitly say that it’s built on Chromium, the open-source underpinnings of Chrome and Edge, though you can use Chrome plugins, Norton says.

Most browsers are free, though Norton waffles a bit in this regard as well. “Yes, Neo is free to download and use with an invitation code for Alpha testing,” Norton says. “We may introduce optional premium features later, but the core experience will always remain accessible.”

Although most users still use either Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, there’s a small collection of third-party browsers, including Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and more, that promise to do more than the mainstream browsers do. Soon, you can add Neo to the list.

Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld