Most computer people, perhaps. For the average user the difference between an app and a website (especially an app-like website) is much fuzzier, and “launching” an app sounds more technical (and thus more appropriate for an operation that they don’t entirely understand) than “opening” it, so that’s the word they use.

I expect an LLM to be smarter than that, particularly for an audience that frequently works in the technology industry.

Biasing the tool for a developer audience would hurt it's usefulness to more general audiences. I did not get the impression the tools were meant only for developers.

In the 1990s, we frequently used the phrase "launch a website" to mean "navigate to the website", so your prompt could have been clearer than just three words.

“Launching” an application (browser) has been a common phrase for as long as I can remember.

You are the only person discussing “launching an application” in this thread.

How else would you view a website? You've never heard anyone say, "bring up google.com" or "launch google.com"? I've heard those phrases and similar all the time. It's common parlance.