Best of Google Chrome — August 2025

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   Article

   80 LEVEL·41w

   Google Offered $34.5B for Chrome, May Be Forced to Sell

   AI startup Perplexity has offered $34.5 billion to acquire Google's Chrome browser, claiming it would benefit users by moving the product to an independent operator. This comes as Google faces potential forced divestiture following a federal judge's ruling that the company violated antitrust laws by maintaining a search monopoly. The DOJ has proposed aggressive remedies including forcing Google to sell Chrome and limit Android's default search arrangements. Perplexity plans to keep Google as the default search engine and continue supporting the open-source Chromium platform if the acquisition proceeds.

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   Article

   Una Kravets·41w

   5 Useful CSS functions using the new @function rule

   CSS custom functions using the new @function rule have landed in Chrome 139, enabling developers to write reusable logic that accepts arguments and returns computed values. The article demonstrates five practical examples: a negation function for inverting values, an opacity function for creating transparent color variants, a fluid typography function that scales text responsively, a conditional border radius function that removes rounded corners near viewport edges, and a layout sidebar function for responsive grid layouts. These functions make CSS more organized and dynamic, similar to utility functions in JavaScript, and represent a significant step toward more powerful CSS capabilities with upcoming @mixin and @apply rules.

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   Article

   Collections·39w

   Anthropic Introduces Claude AI Agent for Chrome to Enhance Browser Interaction

   Anthropic launched Claude for Chrome, an AI browser extension in limited preview for 1,000 Max subscribers. The extension can autonomously interact with web pages for tasks like scheduling and email management. Security experts identified prompt injection attacks as a major vulnerability, with initial success rates of 23.6% reduced to 11.2% through safety measures. The extension includes site-level permissions, action confirmations, improved system prompts, and content restrictions to enhance security. Anthropic takes a cautious approach compared to competitors, seeking real-world feedback before broader release.

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   Video

   Theo - t3․gg·40w

   JSON just got way better (yes really)

   Chrome's V8 engine has dramatically improved JSON.stringify performance by up to 3x through several optimizations: a new side-effect-free fast path that bypasses expensive checks, specialized string handling for one-byte vs two-byte characters, SIMD instructions for escape character detection, hidden class caching for repeated object shapes, segmented buffer allocation to eliminate copying overhead, and upgrading to the DragonBox algorithm for number-to-string conversion. These improvements are available in Chrome 138 and benefit most common JSON serialization use cases automatically.

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   Video

   Juxtopposed·42w

   I Tested EVERY Modern Browser UI...

   A comprehensive review and comparison of modern browser user interfaces, testing dozens of browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera, and many lesser-known alternatives. The analysis evaluates each browser based on onboarding experience, customization options, navigation ease, design consistency, tab management features, and extension support. The review covers mainstream browsers, privacy-focused options like Brave and DuckDuckGo, innovative designs like Arc and Zen, and specialized browsers for different use cases, ultimately ranking them in tiers from minimal to amazing based on their UI quality and user experience.

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