Rising AI player Perplexity AI has surprised the tech world with its offer to take over the world’s most popular web browser, Google Chrome, at only $34.5 billion.
Earlier, the company, which is headed by a former Google and OpenAI employee, and backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and US chip-maker, Nvidia, offered to buy the American version of TikTok, which faces a sell-out deadline in September by its Chinese owner or face a ban in the US.
Competing with well-known platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, the three-year-old Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm, estimated at $18 billion, launched an AI-powered browser called Comet last month.
It is uncertain how Perplexity is planning to fund the proposed deal, with many technology industry insiders calling it a “stunt offer” that is much lower than Chrome’s true value. It is also unclear whether Chrome is even for sale.
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Judith MacKenzie, head of Downing Fund Managers, was quoted by BBC’s Today programme as calling it an “unsolicited bid” that’s “not actually funded yet”.
“I love their boldness,” MacKenzie added.
"The offer isn't serious, but if someone like Sam Altman or Elon Musk tripled it, they could genuinely secure dominance for their AI," said Heath Ahrens, a technology industry investor, while another industry veteran, Tomasz Tunguz, from Theory Ventures, said Chrome’s value “maybe ten times more valuable than the bid or more”.
In a letter to Sundar Pichai, the boss of Google’s owner, Alphabet, Perplexity claimed that moving Chrome to an independent operator that’s committed to user safety would benefit the public.
Meanwhile, Google’s dominance of the search engine and online advertising market has come under the scanner, with two anti-trust cases filed against it in the US.
A US federal judge is expected to order a break-up of the search business in a ruling later this month, although Chrome said it would appeal such a ruling.
The firm called the idea of spinning off Chrome, which has at least three billion users, an “unprecedented proposal” that would harm both consumers and security.
In its own problems, Perplexity has been accused of breaking copyright rules from media organisations like the BBC, which sent a legal letter to the firm’s chief executive, Aravind Srinivas, in June, saying it had reproduced BBC content “verbatim” without its permission.
In its response, Perplexity claimed that the “BBC’s claims are just one more part of the overwhelming evidence that the BBC will do anything to preserve Google’s illegal monopoly”, without explaining what Google has anything to do with the matter.
As part of its takeover proposal, Perplexity said users would continue to have Google as the default search engine within Chrome, though users could adjust their settings.
The firm even offered to maintain and support Chromium, an open-source platform that supports Chrome and other browsers including Microsoft Edge and Opera.
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