It also would help it raise a bigger funding round itself, boosting its own valuation:

> “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.”

Of course, Google itself is going to fight tooth and nail to not sell Chrome, which has become something like the successor to the once-dominant Microsoft Internet Explorer. Just as Internet Explorer once had a chokehold on the whole web, Chrome has an outsized influence on which features make it into the web platform.

> “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.”

It’ll be interesting to see what happens here. We don’t know if the judge will force a Chrome sale, and if it does, there will surely be other offers. (And perhaps it could strike a deal with an open source org like Mozilla to prevent a competitor from creating business risk for it.) But it’s a clear indication of the position Perplexity would like to take in the ecosystem — not just in AI, but in all of tech.

Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome

fair warning: I am biased. I love the web. I believe that the web is the one remaining platform that doesn't have a traditional gatekeeper and AI is one of those technologies that might actually keep the one existing potential gatekeeper at bay. I've also played a role in making chrome successful. From 2012 - 2017, I built up chrome's media stack and video codec strategy - building the media platform into the juggernaut that it is today.

This doesn't mean I am not critical of chrome. Heck, during its memory hogging days, I was an internal champion shouting from the rooftops making sure that it will continue to be a good steward of the resources.

But, it's 2025. If there's one thing that we must all admit, it's that Google's stewardship of Chrome is one of the best by any company for such a mission critical platform and software.

Perplexity is many things. I personally think they are thinking about search in a novel way and bringing innovation to the fore. However, I urge you to try comet. You will (likely) agree with me that they are not the strongest candidate for a steward of a great web platform.

The fact that they are trying to buy chrome and eventually gut them into another comet also suggests that they don't understand what needs to be done to be a strong steward of the web.

Here are some things that would have made them be serious:

Chrome innovated on federated learning to ensure double blind privacy. I know that google gets shit for not being privacy focused. Again, caveat - I used to work there - people inside Google and Chrome were some of the most privacy conscious people who will work and fight hard against any privacy encroaching movement in the API, Platform or Google-code.

All to say - it will be a horrible day for chrome to end up with perplexity alone. I don't trust them, even when I think they are actually making strong improvements to search.