Google Expands Gemini AI in Chrome to Seven Asia-Pacific Markets, Launches Reusable 'Skills'

Google is moving fast to make Gemini AI the default way people interact with the internet. On April 20, the company began rolling out its Gemini-in-Chrome integration to seven new Asia-Pacific markets — Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam — while simultaneously making available a new “Skills” feature that fundamentally changes how users can work with AI inside a browser.

Together, these moves represent Google’s most significant expansion of AI-native browsing since Gemini was first integrated into Chrome, and they have significant strategic implications for a company that controls the world’s most widely used browser with approximately 3.5 billion active devices.

Seven New Markets, Billions of Potential Users

The Gemini-in-Chrome expansion to the Asia-Pacific region is notably broad in both geographic scope and technical reach. The feature is available on desktop and iOS across all seven countries, with the exception of Japan where it is currently limited to desktop only. Android support is expected to follow across all markets in the coming months.

The selection of markets is not coincidental. Australia, Singapore, and South Korea represent high-income markets with strong AI adoption rates and large developer communities. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam are among the fastest-growing internet markets in the world by user count. Japan is the largest economy in the group and one where Google faces strong competition from domestically oriented platforms.

With this expansion, Gemini-in-Chrome now covers most of the world’s significant internet markets. The company had previously launched the feature in the United States, United Kingdom, and select European markets.

Skills: Saving and Reusing AI Workflows

Alongside the geographic expansion, Google has rolled out a feature called Skills that represents a meaningful evolution of how AI is used inside a browser — not just for one-off questions, but for repeatable workflows.

The core mechanic is simple: when a user writes a prompt in the Gemini sidebar in Chrome that they expect to use repeatedly, they can save it as a Skill directly from their chat history. The next time they need it, they can activate it by typing a forward slash (/) in the Gemini sidebar or clicking the plus (+) button, and the Skill runs against whatever page or set of tabs they are currently viewing.

Practical applications are immediately evident. A marketing professional who frequently asks Gemini to summarize competitor pricing pages can save that as a Skill and run it on any pricing page with a single click. A journalist who asks Gemini to extract the key claims and sources from news articles can save that workflow and apply it to any article. A developer who uses Gemini to explain code snippets can create a dedicated Skill for that purpose and trigger it on any page containing code.

Skills launched initially to desktop users signed into their Google accounts, and in the current rollout are available only when Chrome’s browser language is set to English (US). Support for additional languages is expected to follow.

The Agentic Tier

Beyond the Skills feature, Google is also testing a more powerful capability that moves Gemini in Chrome from assistant to agent: the ability to control the browser window itself and autonomously complete tasks on the user’s behalf.

This agentic feature — which allows Gemini to navigate pages, fill forms, click buttons, and execute multi-step workflows across multiple websites — is currently in limited testing and available only to subscribers of Google’s AI Pro and AI Ultra paid tiers in the United States. No timeline has been announced for broader availability.

The significance of this capability is substantial. A browser-native AI agent that can autonomously complete web-based tasks would represent a fundamentally different kind of computing interface — not a tool you ask for help, but a system you instruct to go do things. Google’s decision to gate this behind a paid subscription tier while testing it is consistent with its approach to AI Pro features broadly: build trust and gather data on safety and reliability before broader rollout.

Why This Matters Strategically

Google’s approach to AI distribution through Chrome is worth examining alongside its competitors’ strategies. OpenAI is building a superapp around ChatGPT. Microsoft has integrated Copilot into Windows and its entire productivity suite. Apple is embedding AI features into iOS, macOS, and its hardware ecosystem.

Google’s bet is that Chrome is the most defensible and most universally distributed distribution channel for AI in existence. Chrome runs on 3.5 billion devices — Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Chromebook — covering operating systems and hardware platforms that no single competitor controls. An AI assistant that lives in Chrome is, by definition, available everywhere Chrome is available.

The Skills feature is an early attempt to create the kind of habit formation and switching cost that would make Gemini-in-Chrome sticky beyond mere convenience. If users build a library of saved Skills over months of use, migrating to a competing browser-based AI assistant becomes meaningfully costly in terms of lost workflow capital.

Gemini’s Wider Browser Strategy

The APAC expansion also coincides with growing momentum for Gemini in Chrome as a platform, not just a feature. Google has indicated that third-party developers will eventually be able to create and distribute Skills through a Skill store, which would extend Chrome’s AI capabilities beyond what Google itself builds — paralleling the Chrome Extensions ecosystem that has existed for over a decade.

That prospect, if realized, would turn Gemini in Chrome from a Google-built AI assistant into a platform for AI-powered browser extensions: a meaningful moat in a competitive AI distribution landscape.

For the 3.5 billion Chrome users who now have access to Gemini — or will soon — the immediate experience is more modest: an AI sidebar that understands context, can be asked questions about any webpage, and can now remember and replay the workflows you care about. For Google, the ambition is considerably larger.