Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome

https://www.wsj.com/tech/perplexity-makes-longshot-34-5-billion-offer-for-chrome-5ddb7a22

by eduction • 11 months ago

192 108 11 months ago

bko• 11 months 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.

It'll be interesting which narrative wins out.

rvz2• 11 months 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• 11 months ago

I think they are offering $10 per user given that 3.45 billion is a widely reported user estimate.

dcreater• 11 months ago

It sounds like yet another PR stunt from these guys

sudenmorsian• 11 months 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.

spandrew2• 11 months 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.

athenot• 11 months ago

I think google amasses far more information via website analytics, Gmail and SSO (Log in with Google) than "willingly"-input search queries.

marcosdumay• 11 months ago

They have no lack of attempts to change their central business into a social media ad company, tough. They just failed.

rpgbr• 11 months 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.

Zambyte2• 11 months ago

Perplexity is also an ad-tech company.

lukaslevert2• 11 months ago

That has yet to do any successful ads at scale**

mrweasel4• 11 months 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).

nicce3• 11 months 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?

trentnix• 11 months ago

Isn't Perplexity the AI company that has been accused of ignoring robots.txt and requests not to data harvest?

Hamuko2• 11 months ago

It is. They do go further than just ignoring robots.txt too.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-unde...

jnamaya• 11 months 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.

tuesdaynight• 11 months 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.

giancarlostoro• 11 months ago

Are they truly marketing stunts? I mean I guess they could just fork Chromium instead.

minimaxir• 11 months ago

Perplexity made a similar longshot offer for TikTok at the peak of that controversy, so yes it's a stunt: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/18/perplexity-ai-makes-a-bid-to...

firloop• 11 months ago

They've already forked Chromium. https://www.perplexity.ai/comet

rvz2• 11 months ago

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.

spandrew2• 11 months ago

Not me — Perplexity is so much better than Google. This troll bid made me laugh

nickthegreek• 11 months 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.

beepbopboopp• 11 months 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.

koakuma-chan• 11 months ago

Which web search do you prefer over perplexity?

ZeroCool2u• 11 months ago

Kagi is a nice alternative.

https://kagi.com/

lukaslevert2• 11 months ago

https://search.brave.com

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.

xnx2• 11 months ago

Google

hagbard_c• 11 months 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.

[1] https://docs.searxng.org/

Aurornis• 11 months 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• 11 months 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.

Esophagus43• 11 months 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.

Analemma_• 11 months 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.”

jamil7• 11 months ago

I think the UX is good and could imagine it being applied well to a much better research tool.

Wheaties4662• 11 months ago

It sounds like you need to be using the research function, which takes ~3 minutes but does a much more in depth search to find more relevant data.

__rito__2• 11 months ago

Hard disagree.

Even during ChatGPT peak, when HN was buzzing with every other post being how ChatGPT/other LLM product replaced Google for them, I could not honestly switch, or meaningfully reduce my Google usage.

Until Perplexity.

It was the AI product that actually reduced my Google usage. Even with AI mode directly built into Google homepage now, Perplexity is still better.

It has basically zero hallucination, each para/entry backed by a URL, and lower latentcy than any other LLM product.

I don't know why you find it bad. I use it daily, and for serious searches.

It has fundamentally changed the way I search the web/ask questions in the web.

XCSme• 11 months ago

Same experience. Maybe I was using it wrong, but it always returned some outdated results, not even completely related to my query.

joshuat• 11 months ago

My reason is much more petty, but their refusal to allow me to sign-in with either a password+2fa or passkey and instead force me to open my email for a magic link has pushed me away.

Don't make using your product annoying.

nashadelic• 11 months ago

Magic links are an order of magnitude safer than passwords, and the majority of regular users will never set up 2FA, so this raises the base safety for all

AbstractH24• 11 months ago

A year ago it was useful. Now you are reminding me to cancel my subscription because it rarely is better that ChatGPT or Claude

Ever since deep thinking came out

tzury• 11 months ago

Yet another cheap PR stunt.

riku_iki• 11 months ago

Why would they pay so much money for Chrome? They could just fork chromium for free? 34B is just for web address?

svantana• 11 months ago

I'm guessing the installed user base make up the bulk of the value.

warkdarrior• 11 months 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.

jlokier2• 11 months 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.

Ferret7446• 11 months ago

If Google loses Chrome though, it will no longer be pre-installed on Chromebooks and Android. They will just fork Chromium, call it something else, and pre-install that. Sure they might lose some Windows users who miss the news reports and don't install the replacement and keep using Chrome, until their bookmark sync stops working since that relies on proprietary Google account integration.

tiagod• 11 months ago

A lot of people think The Internet == Chrome == Google

Hamuko2• 11 months ago

We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine. Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. We see continued evidence that Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing their source ASNs to hide their crawling activity, as well as ignoring — or sometimes failing to even fetch — robots.txt files.

Yeah, I'm sure that Perplexity would only have noble ideas in mind if the acquire a piece of software that is installed on >60% of the web-browsing population and automatically updates in the background.

jrecursive• 11 months ago

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.

onlyrealcuzzo3• 11 months 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.

bigmadshoe• 11 months 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.

sofixa• 11 months 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.

wand3r• 11 months 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• 11 months 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.

twelvedogs• 11 months ago

It's not about stopping people from making a browser and a search engine and tying them together, it's about abusing your web browser monopoly to promote your search monopoly (and vice versa) to keep competition out

The rules apply to everyone it's just that no one else has a search or browser monopoly

Microsoft had a browser monopoly at one point and it should have happened to them but they generously pissed it away

gorfian_robot• 11 months ago

in case you missed it, Perplexity is now in bed with Trump

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/trump-ai-truth-search-per...

demarq• 11 months ago

The link seems to suggest they provide services to Trump but hilariously not to his benefit at all.

aliljet• 11 months 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• 11 months 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.

taylorius• 11 months ago

Chrome has a slightly higher installed base than comet.

IncreasePosts2• 11 months ago

The same reason Elon bought twitter for $40B or whatever. The tech isn't worth that - the audience is(or, might be)

dismalaf2• 11 months 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.

internet_points• 11 months ago

If they buy Chrome, they can change the default search on a web browser used by half the planet.

fsflover2• 11 months ago

But will it be legal?

jarym• 11 months 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!

mrweasel4• 11 months ago

I was thinking the same thing. If they have to raise money to buy Chrome, can they afford the development teams?

tinyhouse• 11 months 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.

add-sub-mul-div• 11 months 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?

chollida1• 11 months 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• 11 months ago

My exact thoughts as well, this “offer” might as well be a cry for Google to take a controlling interest in Perplexity lol

pbiggar• 11 months ago

If it's worth $18B, and Chrome is worth $34B, then the new company is worth $52B. Google gets 34/52 = 65% of the merged company.

zazar• 11 months ago

Much like this offer, Perplexity is a shallow gimmick.

fsflover2• 11 months ago

And your comment is a shallow dismissal, which is against the HN guidelines.

1oooqooq• 11 months ago

if i were google I'd marc jacobs them.

get the money, then turn around and release chromium by Google.

unmole• 11 months ago

get the money

What money? Perplexity's latest valuation is ~18 billion USD.

beoberha• 11 months 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.

breadwinner• 11 months 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.

Esophagus43• 11 months 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.

saratogacx• 11 months 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.

__rito__2• 11 months ago

Even during ChatGPT peak, when HN was buzzing with every other post being how ChatGPT/other LLM product replaced Google for them, I could not honestly switch, or meaningfully reduce my Google usage.

Until Perplexity.

It was the AI product that actually reduced my Google usage. Even with AI mode directly built into Google homepage now, Perplexity is still better.

It has basically zero hallucination, each para/entry backed by a URL, and lower latentcy than any other LLM product.

I don't know why you find it bad. I use it daily, and for serious searches.

It has fundamentally changed the way I search the web/ask questions in the web. One particular way: I can now combine multiple subsequent searches into one. And I can trust the results.

matltc• 11 months ago

I use it for very quick searches much like I would have used Google. Basically gives me the first page of Google results minus sponsored links plus a few-paragraph wiki for whatever.

I have Pro Claude plan, so I use that for deeper research. Not sure there's much difference now that Claude has web search. Perp is slightly more terse and also doesn't expend my tokens for Claude code

xnx2• 11 months ago

Very disappointing that legitimate news organizations are giving this joke story coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/technology/perplexity-goo...

Maybe Gamestop, PeTA, or Roblox should make an offer next.

cesarvarela• 11 months ago

Aren't people just asking Claude and/or Gpt to do web searches instead?

I had for quite some time only relied on o3 pro for every query and it always defaulted to web search so hallucination rate was (seemingly) very low.

Now I'm using Claude more and he (it?) needs to be reminded that it he has a web saerch tool but other than that it works great.

ac130kz• 11 months ago

Are they out of their minds? How can a tiny startup without their own actual product (nowadays anyone can strap OpenAI/Anthropic API or fork open source models, such as Deepseek, on top of web scraping) buy the largest browser used by billions made by a company making trillions?

internetter• 11 months ago

It’s simple, they can’t. This is a publicity stunt

gausswho• 11 months ago

I still don't understand how forcing Google to sell Chrome achieves any of the regulator's goals. The only piece that matters is how Google controls both ends of the advertising market. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is ushering this penalty because its a public slap on the wrist that they can go home laughing about.

Why buy Chrome anyway? Put that $34.5 billion into a team that forks and develops Chromium. Ban Google from developing browsers as well as paying for search preference in other browsers.

Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome

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