After years in which it chose to remain with the classic and familiar structure, Google is beginning to change direction. Recently, the company announced that the Chrome browser will receive official support for Vertical Tabs – a feature that until recently was considered the domain of competing browsers like Arc and others trying to challenge Chrome’s dominance in the market.
Behind the change lies a real need: Heavy users, researchers and people who work with dozens of tabs simultaneously struggle to navigate when everything is compressed into a single row. In the regular horizontal structure, once the number of tabs crosses a certain threshold, the titles become compressed and disappear, leaving the user to guess what is behind each small icon. The new option, which can be activated simply by right-clicking on the browser window and selecting "Show Tabs Vertically", moves all management to the side of the browsing window. There, the titles remain fully readable, and managing tab groups becomes much more intuitive and convenient.
This is not the first time Google has played with this idea. The company already tested the concept in the previous decade, but at the time it never left the beta stage and was abandoned. This time, it seems that the growing competition from AI-based browsers and other modern tools has left the search giant with no choice but to align. The goal is clear: To prevent users from migrating to competitors just to get productivity tools that have already become a standard in the market.
Alongside the tabs, Chrome is also getting an upgraded version of Reading Mode. This time it is a full-screen interface that removes distractions and presents content in a clean and focused way. It can be activated by right-clicking on a page and selecting the appropriate option, and it becomes a more central part of the browsing experience.
These moves do not come in a vacuum. Over the past year, Chrome has accelerated the pace of updates with the integration of Gemini, improvements to autofill and Split View mode. At the same time, new browsers – especially those coming from the AI world – are trying to differentiate themselves with different user experiences. Google, it seems, can no longer ignore the pressure.
There is also a certain irony here: The new Reading Mode is designed to deal with the overload of ads and distractions on websites, but that same reality was created in part due to a decline in traffic to content sites – a trend that is also connected to the entry of AI tools, including those of Google itself.