The AI competition among internet giants is moving from large models to the most fundamental entry point—the browser. On March 2nd, Meituan officially launched its AI-native browser "Tabbit" and opened a free public test. However, this new product, which carries Meituan's "AI dream," didn't have time to stand out with its features before it was pushed into the spotlight due to an embarrassing "copycat" controversy.

The incident started when an independent developer "Mengxi Sleep?" discovered that Tabbit's interface design was highly similar to his open-source project ReadFrog, creating a sense of "a big company taking over a small fish (ReadFrog)." This immediately sparked widespread discussion in the industry. Although Meituan quickly clarified and modified the interface, this incident cast a shadow on Tabbit's debut and revealed the superficiality of big companies in product development.

As an "AI-native" browser, Tabbit attempts to grow new branches in soil without a search foundation. Testing shows that it does demonstrate a certain level of AI integration in information extraction, long article summaries, and basic instruction execution, but it still appears "overambitious yet underpowered" when dealing with complex logic and deep interaction scenarios. More severe challenges come from the outside: in the AI browser market, there are pioneers like Zhou Hongyi from 360, veteran players like Kunlun Wanwei, and countless AI startups emerging like mushrooms after rain.

Why is Meituan determined to enter the browser market? Behind this lies a deeper concern about traffic. As users' interaction habits shift from "search boxes" to "chat boxes," browsers are no longer just containers for displaying web pages; they have become the critical passage to operating system control (Agent).

Currently, the AI browser market is still in its "wild growth phase," and the real killer applications have not yet been defined. Whether Tabbit can move beyond the controversy and truly evolve into an intelligent assistant that controls everything depends not only on the speed of technological iteration but also on whether Meituan can find reasons for users to stay other than "ordering takeout." After all, in the AI era, users are only willing to pay for real efficiency, not for an old bottle wrapped in an AI shell.