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AI Chrome

Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome (msn.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the day-dreaming dept.
AI startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to purchase Google's Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant's web-search dominance. From a report: Perplexity's offer is significantly more than its own valuation, which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall Street Journal that several investors including large venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full.

Estimates of Chrome's enterprise value vary widely but recent ones have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is weighing whether to force Google to sell the browser as a means of weakening Google's stranglehold on web search. Mehta last year ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market and is expected to rule this month on how to restore competition.
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Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome More

Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome

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  • through the gates of Valhalla. You shall ride eternal. Shiny, and chrome

  • Free (Score:5, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @12:18PM (#65584990)

    They dont know you can download it off the internet for free?

  • Why? Why not chromium?

    They need development experience on it anyway.
    They need to get away with any google intertwining anyway.
    They need to Geert away with any google related branding anyway.

    Use chromium and save a few USD BILLIONS .

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
      It's the market share they want. The browser is just the tool to get immediate market share.

    • Today you thought about Perplexity, you talked about Perplexity. Without a potentially bogus offer to purchase Chrome, this might not have happened.
      Seems like a pretty cheap (free?) way to get some name recognition and discussion about your AI startup.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PDXNerd ( 654900 )

        Investors in Perplexity AI have included Jeff Bezos, Tobias Lütke, Nat Friedman, Nvidia, and Databricks.

        I don't think any of those people or organizations give two shits about 'free name recognition', they want more data and Chrome is a leading source of data ingestion for Google. A few tweaks and it could very well be the leading source of data ingestion for perplexity as well. After all, "AI search" removes a certain amount of data from the query to google, transfering the data from the google query to perplexity AI.

        • Maybe, but then again, how many megacorps buy the naming rights to sporting events or stadiums?
          Sure there might be a business case for wanting to buy Chrome, but outside of having their arms broken by antitrust regulators (lol), what are the odds that Google would part ways with Chrome? Let alone to a competitor?

    • Because they want the user-base... What do you think the value of Chrome is?

  • I like perplexity, but (Score:3)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @12:23PM (#65585016)

    ...this would be a stupid mistake

    • That would give them access to limitless AI training data. 35 billion would be a small price to pay for that and Google wouldn't sell unless they were forced to during an antitrust trial.

      The internet is rapidly cutting off AI data scrapers. This means startups will not be able to get the data they need to make their models work for very much longer.

      But even without that the internet is so rapidly filling up with AI slop that it's going to poison any model that you try to train on it. You need to con

      • I do agree with you.
        Chrome is Google, Edge is Microsoft, everything these days is based around Chromium (developed by Google, if I remember right).
        Perplexity is supposed to be "AI" (big predictive text thing)... AI has no place on my systems unless I let it in.
        We don't need AI baked into our browsers... I can search for crap on my own, and read the articles I want to read on my own... I don't need a thing to try and 'hold a conversation' with me where it venerates/hallucinates me as a 'God' while telling me

        • We don't need AI baked into our browsers...

          lol.
          You uhh, think Perplexity would be the one to bring that to Chrome? ;)

          I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but AI is already integrated into Chrome (Gemini) and Edge (Copilot).

          • Oh... Copilot, the thing I completely uninstall on every Windows10 installation.
            And... Gemini... the thing that's not in my current Chrome, and will be disabled when it tries to be.
            You mean those? You can find instructions online (without using AI!) to disable all that. Not that difficult, unless you can't figure out 'regedit' (do NOT mess with the registry unless you know what you're doing).

            • Oh... Copilot, the thing I completely uninstall on every Windows10 installation.

              Many things are called Copilot. It's integrated into your Windows installation, it's integrated into Github, and it's integrated into Microsoft Edge.

              And... Gemini... the thing that's not in my current Chrome, and will be disabled when it tries to be.

              Sure, I mean if you never upgrade- no problem.
              Also ya, I'm sure Google will totally let you "disable" it, and I'm sure they won't accidentally turn it back on every time it's upgraded.

              The point of this was, it's not like a sale to Perplexity changes the status quo.
              If you don't want it done because you want to keep LLMs out of browsers, then that fight is al

              • Of course, you can also go into Chrome's 'flags' and enable or disable crap as you see fit.
                Oh... GitHub... the thing I don't use, and Edge... the other thing I don't use.

                Yeah... I'm a bit more advanced that your typical computer user... going into 'regedit' is a walk in the park for me. I've beta-tested Spybot and Ad-Aware and HiJackThis and 'CoolWebSearch shredder' back in the SpyWareInfo days.
                If I want to disable a 'feature', I'll disable it... so it requires a quick "Interweb" search... that's fine... o

  • $34 billion is a lot of money, fund real browser independence instead . While you're at it make a compensation fund for all the scraping bandwidth you wasted.

  • venture-capital funds had agreed to back

    Good rarely comes of this. At least there is profit to be made off sale of the unused toner cartridges.

  • Is that a good thing? (Score:3)

    by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @12:30PM (#65585046)
    I mean, it would be fully controlled by Perplexity, rather than by Google. Just because Perplexity is a much smaller company it does not follow that this would be any better for end users. Not that I think it will happen though.

    • It probably won't happen, but if it did Perplexity would need to hire any Chromium developers to maintain it. I do think Google employs Chromium's maintainers. But maybe for 50 billion dollars they'd sell Chrome while continuing to maintain Chromium indefinitely. This is a PR stunt or some kinda Hail Mary shot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They would move all development to vibe coding, and overnight Chrome would become crapware, full of security flaws and bugs.

      It would also ram AI in your face at every opportunity.

      We need to break up the Chromo monopoly on browsers, but not by making it terrible.

  • If you are going to be source of most Chrome "traffic [slashdot.org]", you may as well buy it.

  • telemetry (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @12:35PM (#65585068)

    Seems there is deep value in Chrome's telemetry when you replace Google with yourself.

  • is not, nor has it ever been, a monopoly.

    It's simply the best search engine, hands down, and no one has ever prevented Yahoo, Microsoft, or other companies from creating their own. This lawsuit has no merit whatsoever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That's why it's not called anti-monopoly law.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )

      is not, nor has it ever been, a monopoly.

      While the traditional definition does not accurately apply to Google Search, the courts and laws will often have their own definitions of terms that do not match 1:1. The fact that some definitions apply means that you are incorrect in your assertion.

      According to the FTC https://www.ftc.gov/advice-gui... [ftc.gov]

      Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

      ---

      It's simply the best search engine, hands down, and no one has ever prevented Yahoo, Microsoft, or other companies from creating their own. This lawsuit has no merit whatsoever.

      This doesn't hold up, given they lost the lawsuit. And yes, I understand there is an appeal process. My point isn't specifically that they lost. The fact that they were even able to lose means it had

  • Great (Score:2)

    by allo ( 1728082 )

    The browser going from one company only wanting to preinstall their search engine to another company wanting to priorize their search engine.

  • is the day I go back to Firefox.

    I'm not saying Google is a model of a moral corporation, but I would trust them and only a tiny handful of other companies with my browsing data.

    Any other middling company, and there is a countdown to when they get breached an my data is spilled all over the internet.

  • Not sure how selling Chrome will weaken Google's dominance of web search. All the "dominance" in Google's position is held in the back-end servers, algorithms, massive data sets, etc.

    It might impact Googles dominance in web advertising though, since they can probably squeeze more revenue out of people using Chrome than another browser.

    • Honestly they are better off doing what Opera did and spin off a Chromium browser with their built in "search". Perplexity is one of those "shady" AI's that just scrap off anything they can regardless of "robots.txt". It also doesn't help that while its valuation is at "500 Billion" in reality they are probably burning through money with all the "free year" subscriptions they throw at you. The only reason they did that offer was for the publisty to get more donations. The only reason they are big is beca

  • No (Score:1)

    by labnet ( 457441 )

    The one browser I never install because of history as being spyware.

  • This is just a publicity stunt. Being the default search engine in the most popular browser is worth much, much more than that offer. Perplexity just doesnâ(TM)t have enough money for marketing so theyâ(TM)re being stupid instead.

  • If chrome must be spun off to another owner, that owner should not have a presence in AI or a business model that brokers data.

    Oh wait, now there's no one left...

  • Lots of free publicity for the startup.

    A connection with the anti-trust case against Google can not be ruled out. Gives google a way to say âoewe are not a monopoly, see Chrome can be spun off if required.â

    IANAL of course.

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