Tips For Completing Online Tasks With Perplexity's Comet Browser

AI startup Perplexity has been reaching new milestones almost every week lately.

The latest achievement was making its Comet browser available to everyone for free, lifting the previous $200 monthly access fee.

Along with this free launch, the company has rolled out Comet Plus, a paid upgrade option about $5 a month – that provides curated news content from media partners.

Previously, Comet was only accessible to high tier “Max” users or through invitations.

Comet is designed to be your “agentic browser” – the browser that not only displays pages but also assists you in taking action with them.

Comet is set to transform how people search online.

For nearly thirty years, we’ve been accustomed to a search interface that delivers a dozen blue links based on our input keywords.

Over time, about three of those top links turned into ads, followed by a Wikipedia link and then news from well known media outlets.

Perplexity is shaking up this model by turning the browser into a question and answer interface and to some degree, a question-answer- action interface.

This shift indicates that Perplexity sees Comet as a foundational platform rather than just a niche, high priced product.

Now, by offering it to more users for free, it’s solidifying its foundation and making it scalable.

The timing and structure reflect confidence in growth and usage over profit per user.

How can I utilize this browser to finish some tasks and automate a few others?

The secret lies in the assistant button located on the sidebar or within the in-page tool.

This feature can help with basic AI tasks such as summarizing webpage text, pulling out key points, requesting translation help, comparing different sources, and asking questions to obtain contextually relevant information.

According to Perplexity’s terms of use, they store your data on their server to provide this service.

Therefore, it’s wise not to use your personal account for testing this feature.

Since Comet is built on Chromium, users can keep access to extensions and familiar tools, making it easier to adopt.

Another selling point from Comet is that it can “live” in your browsing experience, tracking context across tabs, remembering your previous queries, and providing insights or assistance when you need it.

Comet aims to achieve with this feature is to minimize friction in research, decision making, multitasking, and synthesis while you browse.

Another cool way to use Comet is when you want to check the price of a specific product across different e-commerce sites.

For example, If you gave it a shot while looking for swimming goggles on one online store.

All you needed to do was type a request for the assistant to find the price of the same item on other sites and point out where it’s the cheapest.

In under two minutes, Comet Assistant searched the internet and discovered a deal that was a whole lot cheaper than what you found on one e-commerce site.

Comet to be an awesome tool for mapping out a route in a new city.

For example, you can ask it for driving directions from point A to point B on Google Maps, and then request it to suggest a spot for a quick coffee break.

With that request, it provides step by step directions along with a few coffee stop options.

The AI agent quickly began updating the webpage and finalizing the route planning with coffee break options.

It’s important to remember that these tools will gradually collect our data.

My highly advise users against using their personal email accounts or sharing any personal information with these AI tools.