Perplexity’s Chrome extension is scratching an itch forgotten by Gemini

A couple of months ago, my Wi-Fi provider in France (Bouygues Telecom) launched an excellent offer for subscribers: one year of Perplexity Pro for free. I had been eying the service for a while, having heard nothing but good things from everyone who’s used Perplexity, but since I already had a Gemini Advanced perk with my Pixel 9 Pro, I couldn’t justify stacking more paid AI subscriptions for no reason. But free is free, so I jumped on the chance and redeemed my code.

Since then, Perplexity has surprised me with its focus on search and sourcing answers. I still juggle between it and Gemini (and my free ChatGPT account on occasion), but where Perplexity completely won me over is with its Chrome extension. It’s excellent, and everything I would’ve hoped to see from a Gemini Chrome integration many moons ago.

Perhaps the button I click the most in Perplexity’s extension is Summarize. It just takes the current open page and, you guessed it, summarizes it for me. As a journalist who’s chasing down news and stories, I don’t have the time to read everything every day; I have team members to manage, tech to test, and articles to write myself. So I usually skim the most important articles I find and skip the rest.

With Perplexity’s summaries, I can catch up faster and more efficiently on the day’s news. What my Android Authority colleagues wrote overnight, what the US news cycle brought while I was having dinner last night, or what my Indian colleagues unearthed early in the morning before I woke up. Perplexity sums up the most important articles for me.

It boggles my mind that Gemini webpage summaries in Chrome on Android have been available for nearly two years now, but haven’t officially launched on the desktop version of the browser yet. Why I have to use third-party extensions to get this simple feature is beyond me.

My second favorite Perplexity extension feature is the ability to use it as a search box for any simple or complex query, all while limiting the source to the current page I’m browsing or the current domain I’m on. This has been a timesaver countless times over the last months as I researched design ideas, accessories, and necessary equipment for my new home and garden, as well as while planning for some trips and doing more mundane daily tasks like cooking or working.

For example, I can open Songkick.com and ask Perplexity to find me concerts in Switzerland during the month of July by Italian artists. Songkick’s most advanced search filters don’t allow for any search as precise as this, especially not one limiting artists by their nationality. But I love Italian music and I’m not looking for one particular artist — I’d take any opportunity to catch that rich, melodic language during my next trip.

When I was looking up worthy escape rooms for my next trip to Budapest, I found a neat little list by EscapeRoomers.de, but I wanted to verify if these had been listed on the TERPECA (worldwide escape room awards) ranking before, so I asked Perplexity to cross-check the current list against previous award winners and tell me which rooms have been mentioned on both. Perplexity didn’t wholly understand the TERPECA rankings, but it did make a handy table and help me narrow down the most liked rooms by both sets of reviewers.

There are dozens and dozens of other examples of how I’ve been using Perplexity’s focused search. Finding the best sleep tracker in our Android Authority list of best fitness trackers, opening a list of the best online banks in France and asking for the ones with Google Wallet compatibility, checking SoundGuys for the most stable exercise earbuds, and so on.

That’s not to mention all the home decor, materials, and ideas questions I’ve fielded to Perplexity while browsing for inspiration. I’ve asked dozens of questions about the best desk wood options available on Ilicut before buying the finger-joined oak top I’m currently working on. About the most loved and resistant Walking Pad before buying the A1 Pro. About the best Bluetooth dongles that would allow me to integrate SwitchBot’s air quality sensors and Ikea’s Idasen sit-stand desk into my Home Assistant Yellow setup. I could go on forever.

Better yet, in every single case, I can always pop up the current answer and ask Perplexity to regenerate a different one with another AI model, check its sources, see all the related questions, and follow up with more questions of my own. I love that Perplexity provides a jumping point of sorts between its extension and its entire feature suite: It’s easy to trigger the extension for quick searches and close it when I get my answer, but it’s also a good way to start a deeper dive once the first answer comes in.

Perplexity’s focused search is the kind of life-simplifying AI feature I want whenever I browse the web. Once again, it’s a third-party service with third-party models providing it inside Google’s own browser, and I still don’t understand how there isn’t already a Gemini integration with a similar featureset when Google is so busy jamming Gemini down our throats in every other app and service.

Instead of opening the Gemini website or summoning Google’s AI with @gemini in the URL bar to do an independent search, it should be integrated with the sites and pages I’m already browsing. I don’t want something separate that polls info from random sites; I want the precision of asking questions and restricting queries around the sites and sources that I trust. I want to be able to dig into a specific page, ask more questions about it, cross-check with another source, and compare products or prices. I want AI to augment my browsing and research experience, not to be a standalone tool in the corner that I have to call up independently.

We’ll definitely hear more about Google’s bigger Gemini plans later this month during I/O, and hopefully, these will include better Gemini integrations in the tools we use every day. I’d take a Perplexity-like search helper in Chrome over Gmail writing aids any day of the week. And while we’re at it, let me quickly add pages or sources to my NotebookLM setup and call it up anytime I’m browsing. That tool is invaluable, but it’s so hidden that I forget it nine times out of 10 when I need it.