Google Chrome undergoes regular overhauls to improve the end-user experience. Now, more useful changes are making their way to the most-used browser. One such new improvement is the integration of machine learning to adapt to users’ preferences in the Google Chrome Taskbar.
Google already uses ML in a variety of its products including Gmail and YouTube. The most common use cases are combating spam, generating live captions, and other features that make Google services more convenient to use. The new adaptive taskbar feature in Google Chrome is one such change powered by ML.
New Google Chrome Taskbar feature
Google realized that people have distinct browsing habits and the browser needs to adapt to that. For eg, someone might have a habit of sharing links early morning, while someone would only prefer voice searches while using chrome.
In light of such use cases, Google Chrome Taskbar will now highlight a relevant option based on your usage patterns. So, you will see a highlighted button that suits your use case. Of course, this will be done entirely using ML but you can customize it to your preferences.
It is useful if you see the relevant action button that you frequently use. Apart from the new Google Chrome Taskbar feature, ML will also help in a few other areas. The previous update introduced Journeys in Google chrome which groups all the searches that you made at a particular time.
It tidies up the browsing history into relevant groups that let you retrace your search intent. Plus, you don’t have to scroll long history list just to find a particular URL.
As per Google’s blog, the next Chrome release will also ramp up the safe browsing feature’s efficacy in real-time. In March, Google introduced a new ML model that identifies 2.5 times more potentially malicious sites. Thus, safe browsing will reduce the risk of opening and interacting with malicious and insecure sites.
Chrome will also address the issue of the obnoxious notifications where every website asks to show notifications. Instead of a pop-up, the browser will show the notifications prompt next to the URL.
