AI company Perplexity has offered to buy Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The offer is being characterized as a “longshot,” especially since Perplexity itself is only valued at about $18 billion, according to the newspaper, but the idea is rooted in a very real problem for Google: A judge is currently considering whether Google’s parent company Alphabet should be forced to sell Chrome over antitrust concerns.
Perplexity told the Journal that it had investors lined up, including large venture-capital funds. The newspaper reports that Perplexity’s offer was “designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable, independent operator,” in the AI company’s words. But Alphabet, under CEO Sundar Pichai, has resisted proposals to sell off Chrome.
Other companies like OpenAI have previously floated interest in buying Chrome, though none of the big players have made a large public move like Perplexity. Neither Google nor Perplexity responded to questions from Gizmodo emailed Tuesday morning.
Google Chrome has about 3.5 billion users, which is an incredible market share when you remember that there are only about 8.1 billion people on the planet. The U.S. Justice Department first sued Google in 2020 over allegations of monopolistic behavior, and U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in the summer of 2024 that the tech giant really was a monopoly. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote at the time. The question is what you do about it.
Perplexity recently launched its own browser called Comet, which injects more generative artificial intelligence into the browser experience. But there’s disagreement among AI enthusiasts about whether browsers are actually the future of the AI experience. Many futurists imagine the traditional web browser won’t even be a thing a decade from now. And AI skeptics are quick to point out just how unreliable AI can be when you ask it difficult questions.
Lawsuits against Google sped up in recent years over its alleged antitrust behavior, both in Europe and the U.S. In 2023, the DOJ said Google had engaged in “anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct,” and President Joe Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick B. Garland, said the lawsuits against Google were about protecting consumers and safeguarding competition.
Judge Metha is expected to rule sometime this month about the remedy for Google’s monopoly. And while it’s not clear what the judge will decide, he’ll no doubt take notice of Perplexity’s offer.
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