The AI search startup Perplexity has tendered an unsolicited supply to purchase Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion, the Wall Road Journal reviews.
The bid comes because the Justice Division has requested a federal choose to require Google to unload Chrome to finish an ongoing antitrust case. Nevertheless it’s questionable {that a} startup valued at half that quantity on paper ($18 billion) can afford to purchase Chrome; and Google, in fact, virtually definitely has no intention of promoting it—at the very least not but. (Google didn’t immidiately reply to a request for remark.)
A federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., determined final 12 months that Google holds a monopoly within the web search and promoting markets and is now contemplating a Division of Justice demand that the search large unload its Chrome browser. Google referred to as the DOJ proposal “wildly overbroad” and a part of a “radical interventionist agenda” (language that would draw some unfavourable consideration from the Trump administration).
Perplexity testified in that very same case final spring, at which period it expressed a want to purchase Chrome. OpenAI additionally testified, and its ChatGPT product lead, Nick Turley, additionally testified that his firm can be occupied with shopping for Chrome if the courtroom required Google to promote.
Certainly, proudly owning the Chrome browser would instantly catapult Perplexity from being a longshot for successful, inserting, or exhibiting within the web search wars, to being an actual contender.
In idea, Perplexity might use the Chrome browser in the identical method Google does—as a broadly well-liked entrance door to its AI-powered search engine.
‘A intelligent publicity play’
With Chrome, Google fused the concepts of net searching and net search into one factor that could possibly be completed in a single place.
Chrome modified the browser’s URL to behave as a search bar, too (the “omnibox,” because it’s referred to as). An enormous portion of Google searches come from Chrome, and Google makes the lion’s share of its revenues from exhibiting adverts round search outcomes. Google can place adverts extra successfully due to its entry to all types of consumer searching habits in Chrome.
Perplexity’s bid could be very doubtless one thing lower than a critical strategic gambit.
“This can be a intelligent publicity play by the startup, however nobody ought to take this stunt severely,” says Neil Chilson, former FTC chief technologist and present head of AI coverage on the Abundance Institute.
Chilson provides that the bid may have no bearing on the cures that Choose Amit Mehta is presently contemplating within the antitrust case.
Perplexity is speaking prefer it has each intention of shopping for Chrome. “A number of giant funding funds have agreed to finance the transaction in full, so we’ve got a variety of choices,” the corporate stated in an announcement to Quick Firm Tuesday. “We’re assured in our capability to shut shortly.” Curiously, Perplexity says it commits “by no means to stealthily exchange the default search engine of Chrome (Google).”
Perplexity is sweet at what it does, however nonetheless small
Perplexity employs some very gifted AI engineers, its “reply engine” product works surprisingly properly by most accounts (together with mine), and the corporate has been agile about releasing new merchandise that increase its core service. (It lately launched its personal browser, referred to as Comet.)
However within the face of Google Search, Perplexity continues to be small fry. It serves solely a fraction of web searches, and sends solely a fraction of the product search referrals that go to model web sites.
Perplexity seems extra like an organization to be acquired, not like an acquirer.
Meta, mum or dad firm of Fb and Instagram, reportedly held talks to amass Perplexity earlier this 12 months, however an settlement couldn’t be reached. It’s doubtless that different suitors have approached the startup.
And but the present guidelines of market dominance in tech could possibly be shifting underneath everybody’s toes—due to generative AI.
Throughout this seminal interval within the probably transformative expertise (when the subsequent Googles and Apples could also be being determined), optics matter. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas appears to have a eager sense of this. He is aware of he must preserve his firm’s identify within the dialog with different up-and-comers, resembling OpenAI and Anthropic, because the so-called AI revolution unfolds. He’s completed an admirable job of it—as evidenced by his many podcasts, public appearances, and viral tweets.
So Perplexity’s Chrome bid might come out of the identical playbook. It’s about posturing.
For an organization of Perplexity’s stature to persuade shoppers that it might actually be the inheritor to Google’s search throne, it could wish to puff itself as much as seem to belong in (roughly) the identical weight class because the incumbent. Placing in a suggestion to purchase a key piece of Google’s enterprise might serve that finish.
