$18 Billion Perplexity Offers To Buy $35 Billion Google Chrome Browser

In a stark reminder that AI chatbots are really just glorified search engines, and whoever controls the queries controls the narrative, moments ago the WSJ reported that AI startup Perplexity offered to purchase Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it scrambles to remain relevant in an ever larger field of AI electricity-sucking chatbots and as it seeks to challenge Google’s web-search dominance.

Amusingly, 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.

As reported previously, US 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.

According to the WSJ, the Perplexity offer could be an attempt to signal to the judge that there is an interested buyer, should he force a sale. In a letter to Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet,  Perplexity said its offer to buy Chrome is “designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable, independent operator.”

The offer may well be moot: Google hasn’t indicated a willingness to sell Chrome, and in testimony this year, Pichai told the judge that forcing the company to sell it or share data with rivals would harm Google’s business, deter it from investing in new technology and potentially create security risks. Chrome has roughly 3.5 billion users worldwide and accounts for more than 60% of the global browser market.

Needless to say, AI engines getting an existing search engine rail is the holy grail for most of them. 

Founded in 2022, San Francisco-based Perplexity recently released its own web browser, called Comet, to some of its users. Judging by today’s offer, not many are using it. 

Perplexity told Pichai that, as part of the proposed acquisition, it would maintain and support Chromium, the open-source project that supports Chrome and other browsers. It also said that it would continue placing Google as the default search engine within Chrome, though users could change settings.

The Justice Department filed the antitrust case against Google in 2020. In addition to forcing a sale of Chrome, the judge is considering limiting Google’s ability to pay to be the default search engine on devices and browsers and requiring it to share data with rivals, among other things. In weighing potential remedies earlier this year, Mehta questioned how much new AI chatbots might be whittling away at the traditional search business, of which Google has 90% market share.

Google has proposed a narrower set of remedies that would modify its exclusive agreements with Apple, as well as Mozilla and Android, to allow for more competition. It has said it will appeal the judge’s ruling.

Analysts say the judge is unlikely to force the company to sell Chrome, though he gave little indication of which way he was leaning. During closing arguments earlier this year, he asked whether doing so would be “a little cleaner and a little bit more elegant” than other remedies aimed at improving search competition.