NAL, but IMO it's legal & political maneuvering. DOJ asked Judge Mehta to consider forcing divestiture of Chrome after Google was found to illegally maintained a search monopoly. If it's determined the divestiture is feasible, especially with an existing more-or-less "credible buyer" at the ready, it looks executable. The offer is basically crafted to fit the DOJ/regulator concerns, ie everything is build around "least disruptive": keeping Google the default search engine, etc. Furthermore, just by doing this, they are putting ideas out there about what an "acceptable buyer" is and puts a number to the discussion about "what Chrome is worth". Purely remedies chess and an attempt to own the narrative. Google's going to say no, at least as-is, but this certainly throws a wrench in the works. Lots more moves to be made.
onlyrealcuzzo · 1h ago
Unless Google is banned from providing a browser entirely, they'll just re-fork Webkit and release another browser, and it will very quickly replace Chrome usage.
Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.
It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
But that's not what will happen.
wand3r · 50m ago
Presumably they would include a clause they can't do that? If not, why wouldn't they simply fork Chromium if they haven't already. They must be bargaining that there will be some lockout period and regulatory scrutiny that would prevent them from immeadiately rebranding chrome and repointing all the download links to a new repo.
johnnyanmac · 37m ago
They lose the brand so that's the most important part. And chrome has far divestd from chromium in all the important ways Google makes money. It'd take years for chrome to to lose its marketshare even if Google had a chrome clone made tomorrow.
If anything, they may try to start from scratch, like with Fuschia. In which case the anti-trust was a success in making companies compete again.
bigmadshoe · 1h ago
Google pretty clearly has a monopoly on search though, and their ownership of Android + the #1 web browser in the world maintains this. I don't think a new fork of Webkit would change this argument.
dismalaf · 53m ago
Let's not forget that during the trial it was established that Bing's top search is "google"...
MS literally forces Edge and Bing on users yet they'll seek out Google and Chrome.
sofixa · 50m ago
> Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.
In the EU, they're forced to ask you which browser and which search engine you want.
> It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
Letting one instance of blatant anti competitive and anti consumer behaviour fly because others are allowed isn't the way to go. Google are a bit monopolistic abuser, fix that. Apple are too? Good, that's the next job.
> I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
> But that's not what will happen.
That's how the EU is approaching with the DMA and DSA.
tuesdaynight · 2h ago
These marketing stunts from Perplexity made me stop using their product. For me, it's an indicator that they don't believe in their product, so there's no reason for me to do it either.
Aurornis · 1h ago
I've tried to use Perplexity after reading all of the hype, seeing it praised by so many VCs, and seeing it appear on so many different lists of essential AI tools.
Yet most of my Perplexity queries have produced poor results. It always feels like they optimized for minimizing latency and producing output that feels good instead of doing actual research. Most of the time it feels like the same quality of results I'd get from skimming the top of the Google search page summaries if I didn't filter out the spammy site.
The product could be more useful if it spent several minutes researching, but that would defeat the wow factor that I'm sure their product managers are prioritizing.
pmart123 · 53m ago
I remember when the hype first started around it, it was unusably slow, and produced poor results. Granted, I haven't tried it lately to see if latency improved, but the hype versus product state at the time, really turned me off from the product.
Analemma_ · 21m ago
Perplexity had a business case for one hot minute there, before OAI, Anthropic and Google all added search to their models, but now that have it, Perplexity doesn’t have a reason to exist anymore. They’re kind of the poster child for “if you don’t have your own model, you’re basically VC-funded market fit research for the companies which do, who will go on to copy and crush you.”
Esophagus4 · 52m ago
Really? I’ve found it to be a fantastic product, and a part of my daily use.
It’s reduced my legacy search engine usage significantly.
Is there a better product? ChatGPT with web search enabled?
I guess Google’s AI is probably good, I just haven’t used Google in a while as I switched to DuckDuckGo.
scrumper · 33m ago
I second this. Perplexity is the only AI I actually pay for. It absolutely excels at the kind of deep search into narrow domains where expertise is concentrated in forums and specialist sites. Things like mechanical work on obscure classic vehicles, vacuum tube electronics, company tax arcana. It's also very very good at those questions you sometimes wake up with, where something happened in the news six months ago and you think, "Whatever came of that?"
Its deep research and Pro modes are great at synthesizing thorough briefings on complex topics too, to get up to speed on a new client or job responsibility for example.
It's not a chatbot for me, it's a brilliant, tireless little research minion.
As always with any LLM you should double-check its final, specific answers. It does occasionally hallucinate when information simply isn't available. Your research minion is just that - a minion, you have to have the context. It's not a teacher or guru.
EDIT: the bottom line is, it came along at exactly the right time for me. Google's search results are pages of ads, and DuckDuckGo insists on showing page after page of content-farm blogspam for the types of topics I search for. It cuts right through all that crap for me.
tetris11 · 46m ago
Same, it outshines Gemini and ChatGPT and hallucinates far less. The tone is less eager too, making it feel more tolerable as a tool rather than an unpaid assistant
beepbopboopp · 1h ago
These are consumer products that are basically commodities to all but the largest power users. If you loved their product than this approach should make you ecstatic as its the only way they'll be able to survive as an independent.
OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.
tl;dr: It's way overblown. One of their search integration partners is a large Russian company (Yandex).
sofixa · 45m ago
I don't disagree with the gist of their argument, but the fact that they try to whitewash an actual genocide [1] with "politics" is absurd.
1 - if anyone is confused, the UN convention on genocide explicitly lists taking children of an ethnic group to give them to another in the definition of genocide. Russia is quite openly and blatantly doing this.
viccis · 13m ago
My tax dollars are already funding genocide, so for like 10 cents to go towards Yandex a month, of which some fraction goes towards Russia's quixotic war effort (which is an international crime but not a genocide in intent or effect), is not something that's gonna keep me up at night. Almost every other purchase I make comes with harm roughly commensurate with that of Kagi. The damage to the environment Perplexity and Google (and Kagi) cause with unnecessary AI usage is a much bigger concern to me personally.
sofixa · 45s ago
> which is an international crime but not a genocide in intent or effect)
Why not? Russia has kidnapped hundreds of thousands of children, gives them for adoption to Russians, and claims that Ukrainians are just confused Russians.
If it smells like a genocide, fits the definition of genocide... it's a genocide.
> The damage to the environment Perplexity and Google (and Kagi) cause with unnecessary AI usage is a much bigger concern to me personally.
Multiple things can be damaging at once.
viraptor · 19m ago
"directly" does not mean 3 steps removed. (Kagi-yandex-taxes-military)
Both Kagi and Perplexity are customers of Brave, btw. See https://brave.com/api or just ask if you have questions. Will answer what I can for anyone curious.
xnx · 47m ago
Google
hagbard_c · 29m ago
self-hosted SearXNG [1] pointed at the lot of them. All the results, none of the tracking and some insight in which subjects are suppressed by which search engine.
Not me — Perplexity is so much better than Google. This troll bid made me laugh
nickthegreek · 1h ago
i really enjoy perplexity. i recommend taking advantage of one of the o2 resale deals out there so that its like $7/yr instead of $240 and let the VCs eat the rest. I don’t know of any better ai access deals out there. It’s absurd and unsustainable.
giancarlostoro · 2h ago
Are they truly marketing stunts? I mean I guess they could just fork Chromium instead.
Yes they are. They did it with their bid to buy TikTok which went no where.
Perplexity already has a browser. At this point, this is complete desperation from them for attention.
sudenmorsian · 2h ago
If there was any company that I would trust less with a web browser (and related user data) than an ad-tech company, it would be an AI company.
spandrew · 2h ago
A social media ad company would be the least favourable. At least Google's central ad business is based off of search queries the user gives to them willingly for value.
rpgbr · 2m ago
This was the case, like, 20 years ago. Google is effectively an ad company that makes tech — including a browser — to gather more data from users and sell ads.
athenot · 1h ago
I think google amasses far more information via website analytics, Gmail and SSO (Log in with Google) than "willingly"-input search queries.
marcosdumay · 1h ago
They have no lack of attempts to change their central business into a social media ad company, tough. They just failed.
Zambyte · 1h ago
Perplexity is also an ad-tech company.
lukaslevert · 51m ago
That has yet to do any successful ads at scale**
trentnix · 31m ago
Isn't Perplexity the AI company that has been accused of ignoring robots.txt and requests not to data harvest?
mrweasel · 45m ago
Basically anyone who would want to make an offer for Chrome should be banned for purchasing it.
It's not a profitable business to be in, and Perplexity would just do the exact same thing that might force Google to sell Chrome.
The only companies that should be allowed to buy Chrome are non-profits and companies promising to sell it for a fee (preferably not a subscription).
nicce · 39m ago
> The only companies that should be allowed to buy Chrome are non-profits and companies promising to sell it for a fee (preferably not a subscription).
I am not sure if a single fee works. Browsers are too important and hard to maintain. What if people had paid single fee for Chrome 15 years ago for non-profit?
mrweasel · 20m ago
You could charge for upgrades.
nicce · 10m ago
I don't think that it works with browsers. Otherwise web standards will not progress very well, since everyone tries to support the first Chrome version for their website. We create even more friction than having different browsers already has.
chollida1 · 1h ago
A $14B to $18B dollar company offering an all stock deal worth about 2x as much as its market cap.
This isn't a serious offer, its a publicity stunt. Google would effectively own the entire company short of some mind blowing multiple expansion here.
Watch for Perplexity to be raising money in the next 6 months. But given this stunt it looks like they think their growth is over and they've peaked as a company.
jeron · 20m ago
My exact thoughts as well, this “offer” might as well be a cry for Google to take a controlling interest in Perplexity lol
jarym · 1h ago
"The AI says I should raise $34.5 billion from investors and make a bid for Google's browser."
I wonder if they've thought about what it'll cost to keep Chrome dominant as a platform including the effort that goes into securing it on an ongoing basis!
mrweasel · 42m ago
I was thinking the same thing. If they have to raise money to buy Chrome, can they afford the development teams?
zazar · 1h ago
Much like this offer, Perplexity is a shallow gimmick.
jnamaya · 2h ago
Perhaps they should invest in tech support instead. I just spent a few days talking to a AI bot about an invoice issue I had.
bko · 2h ago
I have a sense this is one of those issues that people don't know how they should feel, but some narrative of how we as enlightened technologists should feel will form.
On one hand, people don't like Google owning chrome as they have a huge influence on open web and they're essentially an ad company
On the other hand, if in the hands of an AI company, this could mean using your data for models, VC incentives, less open in general. Perplexity doesn't have a money printing machine to forever subsidize a browser.
Maybe Gamestop, PeTA, or Roblox should make an offer next.
beoberha · 59m ago
Anyone here use perplexity? I’ve tried numerous times, but once you get over the flashy UI, it feels like a lot of fluff.
saratogacx · 26m ago
I find myself using it more and more as time goes on. I got one of those year long deals so I'm not really too invested in the cost but the overall experience is not bad.
You get several models you can use (albeit they're not quite as powerful as their branded versions directly). you can setup projects and most other features you come to expect.
They do a good job with search though which is kind of their core value prop. They summarize well, cite sources, and have largely been pretty accurate with their findings. Being able to start a research task and provide more info and context while it is running is nice too for that "oh, I forgot about this!" moment.
With the pro sub you also get $5 in api credits a month so there's that.
Esophagus4 · 43m ago
I am a pretty regular user - I’ve found it to be helpful, and a better way of searching the web for answers.
But I also haven’t used Google in years (I switched to other search engines) so their AI might be just as good.
Perplexity also has overlap with ChatGPT’s web search, but Perplexity is faster for me.
breadwinner · 53m ago
I am a fan. Because it is search based, I see a lot less hallucination, and it always provides links so you can click the link to verify the information.
aliljet · 1h ago
For the simple minded among us, can someone explain why this would be worth 34.5 billion dollars? Wouldn't the fork (https://www.perplexity.ai/comet) be sufficient?
ygjb · 1h ago
At an estimated 3.45 billion Chrome users across virtually all platforms, that places the value of a Chrome user at $10.
Anyone can fork a browser (and many unqualified or underfunded teams do), but acquiring control of the primary surface for Internet access of nearly half the planet? $34.5B seems pretty cheap.
internet_points · 1h ago
If they buy Chrome, they can change the default search on a web browser used by half the planet.
taylorius · 1h ago
Chrome has a slightly higher installed base than comet.
IncreasePosts · 1h ago
The same reason Elon bought twitter for $40B or whatever. The tech isn't worth that - the audience is(or, might be)
dismalaf · 1h ago
The users and data is what everyone wants. Which is scary because Google at least doesn't sell data (they just match contextual ads to users), whereas any company that purchases Chrome no doubt will.
tinyhouse · 1h ago
Perplexity are trying to find their place so they try whatever they can. Web search, shopping search, finance search, browser, deep research, anything. They were first to do a good job on web search but ChatGPT and Claude caught up and now Perplexity, who doesn't have their own family of models like the other two, is shooting in the dark.
rvz · 2h ago
This is not a serious offer. Even if it was, is a low-ball one for a browser like Chrome. (Why did they choose that figure given they know they don't have the money).
Also they do not have anywhere close to having the money or stock value to buy it. So this is just for attention grabbing for the headlines.
Move along now, nothing to see here.
7952 · 1h ago
I think they are offering $10 per user given that 3.45 billion is a widely reported user estimate.
add-sub-mul-div · 1h ago
If they think it's worth that much, ask yourself about how they plan to profit from it.
Imagine a browser (or any tech) that delivers seamless and undisclosed advertising and narrative through conversational interface. Why wouldn't that be an endgame of LLMs?
1oooqooq · 1h ago
if i were google I'd marc jacobs them.
get the money, then turn around and release chromium by Google.
unmole · 50m ago
> get the money
What money? Perplexity's latest valuation is ~18 billion USD.
gorfian_robot · 1h ago
in case you missed it, Perplexity is now in bed with Trump
The link seems to suggest they provide services to Trump but hilariously not to his benefit at all.
tzury · 1h ago
Yet another cheap PR stunt.
riku_iki · 1h ago
Why would they pay so much money for Chrome? They could just fork chromium for free? 34B is just for web address?
jlokier · 1h ago
For the users, via the Chrome brand, and via being pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android. By far most users run Chrome, not Chromium forks, and this would continue after a competent acquisition.
Whoever owns Chrome decides exactly what software most users run for web browsing, decides future web standards in practice, decides which kinds of extensions most users can use, decides the limits and carve-outs of adblockers, codecs and web features, has all the telemetry, and in future decides what AI-driven "presentational" modifications to web pages will be done, and what semantic scraping and uploading will happen automatically in the browser.
svantana · 1h ago
I'm guessing the installed user base make up the bulk of the value.
warkdarrior · 1h ago
After selling Chrome to Perplexity, Google could just announce the end of life for Google Chrome, without an upgrade path. Then it's up to Perplexity to get these users to install Perplexity Chrome.
IncreasePosts · 1h ago
I'm sure part of the sale terms would be gracefully handing over control
tiagod · 1h ago
A lot of people think The Internet == Chrome == Google
Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.
It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
But that's not what will happen.
If anything, they may try to start from scratch, like with Fuschia. In which case the anti-trust was a success in making companies compete again.
MS literally forces Edge and Bing on users yet they'll seek out Google and Chrome.
In the EU, they're forced to ask you which browser and which search engine you want.
> It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
Letting one instance of blatant anti competitive and anti consumer behaviour fly because others are allowed isn't the way to go. Google are a bit monopolistic abuser, fix that. Apple are too? Good, that's the next job.
> I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
> But that's not what will happen.
That's how the EU is approaching with the DMA and DSA.
Yet most of my Perplexity queries have produced poor results. It always feels like they optimized for minimizing latency and producing output that feels good instead of doing actual research. Most of the time it feels like the same quality of results I'd get from skimming the top of the Google search page summaries if I didn't filter out the spammy site.
The product could be more useful if it spent several minutes researching, but that would defeat the wow factor that I'm sure their product managers are prioritizing.
It’s reduced my legacy search engine usage significantly.
Is there a better product? ChatGPT with web search enabled?
I guess Google’s AI is probably good, I just haven’t used Google in a while as I switched to DuckDuckGo.
Its deep research and Pro modes are great at synthesizing thorough briefings on complex topics too, to get up to speed on a new client or job responsibility for example.
It's not a chatbot for me, it's a brilliant, tireless little research minion.
As always with any LLM you should double-check its final, specific answers. It does occasionally hallucinate when information simply isn't available. Your research minion is just that - a minion, you have to have the context. It's not a teacher or guru.
EDIT: the bottom line is, it came along at exactly the right time for me. Google's search results are pages of ads, and DuckDuckGo insists on showing page after page of content-farm blogspam for the types of topics I search for. It cuts right through all that crap for me.
OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.
https://kagi.com/
Quick Google results:
https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/07/17/kagi/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
tl;dr: It's way overblown. One of their search integration partners is a large Russian company (Yandex).
1 - if anyone is confused, the UN convention on genocide explicitly lists taking children of an ethnic group to give them to another in the definition of genocide. Russia is quite openly and blatantly doing this.
Why not? Russia has kidnapped hundreds of thousands of children, gives them for adoption to Russians, and claims that Ukrainians are just confused Russians.
If it smells like a genocide, fits the definition of genocide... it's a genocide.
> The damage to the environment Perplexity and Google (and Kagi) cause with unnecessary AI usage is a much bigger concern to me personally.
Multiple things can be damaging at once.
Both Kagi and Perplexity are customers of Brave, btw. See https://brave.com/api or just ask if you have questions. Will answer what I can for anyone curious.
[1] https://docs.searxng.org/
Perplexity already has a browser. At this point, this is complete desperation from them for attention.
It's not a profitable business to be in, and Perplexity would just do the exact same thing that might force Google to sell Chrome.
The only companies that should be allowed to buy Chrome are non-profits and companies promising to sell it for a fee (preferably not a subscription).
I am not sure if a single fee works. Browsers are too important and hard to maintain. What if people had paid single fee for Chrome 15 years ago for non-profit?
This isn't a serious offer, its a publicity stunt. Google would effectively own the entire company short of some mind blowing multiple expansion here.
Watch for Perplexity to be raising money in the next 6 months. But given this stunt it looks like they think their growth is over and they've peaked as a company.
I wonder if they've thought about what it'll cost to keep Chrome dominant as a platform including the effort that goes into securing it on an ongoing basis!
On one hand, people don't like Google owning chrome as they have a huge influence on open web and they're essentially an ad company
On the other hand, if in the hands of an AI company, this could mean using your data for models, VC incentives, less open in general. Perplexity doesn't have a money printing machine to forever subsidize a browser.
It'll be interesting which narrative wins out.
Maybe Gamestop, PeTA, or Roblox should make an offer next.
You get several models you can use (albeit they're not quite as powerful as their branded versions directly). you can setup projects and most other features you come to expect.
They do a good job with search though which is kind of their core value prop. They summarize well, cite sources, and have largely been pretty accurate with their findings. Being able to start a research task and provide more info and context while it is running is nice too for that "oh, I forgot about this!" moment.
With the pro sub you also get $5 in api credits a month so there's that.
But I also haven’t used Google in years (I switched to other search engines) so their AI might be just as good.
Perplexity also has overlap with ChatGPT’s web search, but Perplexity is faster for me.
Anyone can fork a browser (and many unqualified or underfunded teams do), but acquiring control of the primary surface for Internet access of nearly half the planet? $34.5B seems pretty cheap.
Also they do not have anywhere close to having the money or stock value to buy it. So this is just for attention grabbing for the headlines.
Move along now, nothing to see here.
Imagine a browser (or any tech) that delivers seamless and undisclosed advertising and narrative through conversational interface. Why wouldn't that be an endgame of LLMs?
get the money, then turn around and release chromium by Google.
What money? Perplexity's latest valuation is ~18 billion USD.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/trump-ai-truth-search-per...
Whoever owns Chrome decides exactly what software most users run for web browsing, decides future web standards in practice, decides which kinds of extensions most users can use, decides the limits and carve-outs of adblockers, codecs and web features, has all the telemetry, and in future decides what AI-driven "presentational" modifications to web pages will be done, and what semantic scraping and uploading will happen automatically in the browser.
puts on sunglasses
…Perplexing offer.
YEAHHHHHHHHH