Google has extended the reach of its Gemini AI assistant within the Chrome browser, making the tool available to users in India, Canada, and New Zealand starting this week. The integration places Gemini in a persistent sidebar on the desktop browser, allowing it to interact directly with webpage content and a user's connected Google services. The assistant can now process queries in several major Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Tamil, alongside English. Users who receive the feature will spot an "Ask Gemini" icon on their tab bar. Clicking it opens the sidebar, where they can request summaries of articles, ask questions about the page they're viewing, or even compare information across multiple open tabs—useful for shopping or travel planning. Gemini's connection to Google's ecosystem is a key feature. It can draft emails using Gmail data, summarize a YouTube video with timestamps, or check Calendar to schedule a meeting, all without leaving the current browser window. A creative tool, Nano Banana 2, is also accessible through the sidebar for on-the-fly image editing, such as visualizing new furniture in a photo of your room. While the rollout includes a mobile version for Chrome on iOS in India, Google is holding back one advanced feature from these new regions. The "agentic" capability, which lets the AI autonomously control a browser to complete multi-step tasks, remains exclusive to subscribers of the AI Pro and AI Ultra tiers in the United States for now. The broader expansion signals Google's continued push to bake its AI directly into the world's most used web browser.

Source: TechCrunch