Google shut down Project Mariner on May 4, ending the 17-month experiment it launched in December 2024. The project's landing page now displays a single farewell notice: "Thank you for using Project Mariner. It was shut down on May 4th, 2026, and its technology voyaged to other Google products."
The shutdown was first spotted and reported by Wired's Maxwell Zeff, and it did not come as a complete surprise. In March, Wired had reported that Google was already reassigning staffers away from the Project Mariner team, a sign the project was losing internal support months before the official end.
What Project Mariner could do
What made Project Mariner very useful was that it could take action on your behalf, not just answer questions about things. It navigated Chrome, searched job listings, filled out forms, and booked travel on sites like Expedia by taking frequent screenshots of whatever was on your screen, recognizing buttons and text, and then clicking and typing for you. Google later upgraded it to run up to 10 tasks simultaneously, so users could send the agent on several jobs at once while they continued other work. For people who had access, it felt like having an assistant operating inside the browser.
The frustration is that Project Mariner was still limited to a small pool of Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US when it shut down, meaning many users who wanted it never got full access before it disappeared. Google says the technology is moving into Gemini Agent and AI Mode rather than being discarded entirely, but anyone who wants a dedicated browser agent they can use independently today needs to look elsewhere.
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