Perplexity propositions Google with $34.5B to sell off Chrome
Perplexity has said it wants to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion, despite Perplexity's value being considerably less than what it offered.
Google Chrome
The Department of Justice has repeatedly demanded for Google to sell off Chrome, after being deemed a monopolist in 2024. While little has actually happened to offload the browser so far, one company is keen to get its hands on the software.
According to the Wall Street Journal, AI startup Perplexity has made an offer to acquire Chrome from Google. That offer is said to be $34.5 billion in cash.
The offer is one that is much higher than Perplexity itself is worth, with the AI firm estimated to be valued at just $18 billion.
Perplexity insisted to the report that it is a serious offer and that it has backing from several large venture capital firms. In theory, it can access the funds to make the deal a reality.
The offer is apparently in the middle of the range of valuations for the browser. Estimates for its value are put between $20 billion and $50 billion.
As part of the purchase, Chromium will continue to be maintained. The open-source project is used as the base of Chrome and other browsers, including Microsoft Edge, DuckDuckGo, Amazon Silk, and Opera, as well as the core of custom apps, including those running on Electron.
A very big moonshot
To Perplexity, the purchase would give the company a considerable leg up in the marketplace. While it does have its own AI-centric browser, Comet, buying Chrome would give it a massive 3.5 billion users to access and profit from.
It would also mean that Perplexity will be directly competing with Apple's Safari, one of the incumbent browsers on mobile devices.
The move is one that may seem tempting to any big company in a similar position to Google. The sale offers a way for Google to offload the browser that the Department of Justice is keen to see split off from the main company.
However, Google is being very resistant to handing off its browser. It has repeatedly complained in public about the situation and the possibility of a forced sell-off.
A sale would be a risk to consumers when it comes to maintaining security, Google has previously insisted. There's also the issue of user data, with the current and largely understood Google collection regime being changed for something completely different.
Perplexity's actions certainly don't help earn trust from others when it comes to training AIs. On August 4, Cloudflare claimed that Perplexity scraped web pages for AI training, but used several techniques to ignore any robots.txt limitations.
There's also a possibility that the purchase could be financed in a completely different way. In late June, it was rumored that Apple executives had discussed the possibility of acquiring Perplexity, giving the firm a massive cash hoard at its disposal.
Either way, at present, it doesn't seem that Google will take the bait of a sale to Perplexity, or any other major entities keen to pick up the browser. There's a chance that it could accept an acquisition request down the road, but only if it is pushed into it.
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Comments
That's why Alphabet is so desperately defending Chrome from various governments' calls to divest the browser from the rest of the company's operations. Chrome basically FUNDS EVERYTHING ELSE.
There's often confusion about this.
What Google does is offer ad placement to advertisers based on that companies target market wishes. For example Backpacks r Us Inc. wants to connect with wildlife photographers for a new lens carrier bag. In past decades they would have worked with a magazine's advertising dept. Now they log into their Google Ads account and see if Google has a basket category of user ID's having an interest in cameras, lenses, photography, and outdoor activities. Then Google will handle the ad placement on their behalf. Rather than the underlying anonymized and bundled data going to the outside companies, Google is instead serving as a clearinghouse in effect.
The other thing Google (and Apple) may do, for example, is allow favored enterprise partners to submit a list of phone numbers of the folks who have registered on their website to match with an existing Google account if one exists. That's a very effective way of using a company's "friendly" client base for an effective marketing campaign. Google does not confirm any specific accounts exist or hand over user details to do this. There's far more privacy involved than you probably assume.
What is entrusted with or gathered by Google remains with Google. It is not sold.
As for the Chrome purchase offer, that's far higher than the entire market value of Perplexity, so if it was a serious one and not self-promotion then there are obviously shadow partners involved. I tend to think it was self-promotion, but whatever. The bigger issue is what happens with data, users, and privacy?
It generally well understood by more informed people how Google handles user data, the protections involved, and permitted uses. There are well-established rules. A new owner does not necessarily play by those rules, and probably won't. They be under pressure to deliver on the investment and likely willing to do more consumer and privacy unfriendly activities. Remember that Google would be keeping the ad business and control of the search engine. Perplexity is interested in having the data gathering Chrome. How would they monetize it?