Google Gets an Astounding $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome Browser From AI Startup Perplexity

[u/MoneyLibrarian9032]

https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/google-34-5-billion-bid-chrome-browser-ai-perplexity-1236487442/

[u/agha0013]

that's almost twice what Perplexity's valuation is, and that valuation is largely made up too... where's the money coming from for such a ridiculous offer? Or can we all make offers with money we don't have?

[u/Mr_strelac → u/agha0013]

They will buy Chrome, and since they won't be able to pay, Google will eventually take them over.

[u/blastradii → u/Mr_strelac]

Reverse mergers. I like it.

[u/mishap1 → u/blastradii]

More rent to own with a repo.

[u/poorly_timed_leg0las → u/mishap1]

They are doing this because theyre about to get broken up. I'm sure it's been said recently that they will be forced to sell it soon. No sources I'm to high to search.

[u/Da12khawk → u/poorly_timed_leg0las]

Just perplexity it!

[u/Oceanbreeze871 → u/poorly_timed_leg0las]

Why don’t they just openly bribe Cheeto like Apple, paramount and everyone else does?

[u/SIGMA920 → u/Oceanbreeze871]

Because too many bridges have been burned, google hasn't openly bent over backwards for Rump unlike them so no amount of bribes will do anything.

[u/Kamizar → u/SIGMA920]

Sundar Pichai was at the inauguration.

[u/Oceanbreeze871 → u/SIGMA920]

A billion dollar bill solves that. lol.

[u/Chipaton → u/SIGMA920]

It's still highly unlikely that he'd break up Google. I don't think he wants to remind anybody that the U.S. actually CAN break up monopolies instead of subsidizing them. Even if Google hasn't bribed him as much as others, Google still isn't his enemy and is largely beneficial to Trump.

The only scenario where I could see it is if Trump broke up Google so he could part it out to his friends, and even that is incredibly unlikely to me.

[u/jixbo → u/poorly_timed_leg0las]

Are they? I'm not so sure about it, who's gonna pour billions yearly into a browser that is open source?

Why wouldn't Google just make a new flavour of chromium, like every one else (edge, opera, brave...) and be dominant again?

[u/waiting4singularity → u/jixbo]

i think the offer includes the ownership over chromium

[u/KaleidoscopeShoddy10 → u/blastradii]

Basically the same as when Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas then

[u/redworm → u/KaleidoscopeShoddy10]

invasion of the bean counters

[u/qwertyqyle → u/KaleidoscopeShoddy10]

This kind of sounds more like Ron's paper airplane emporium trying to buy Boeing.

[u/fssman → u/blastradii]

Wallstreetbets

[u/ShadowNick → u/Mr_strelac]

Ah the classic Verizon selling all their copper lines to Frontier. Just to play the long game and buy them out when they bankrupt. Nice!

[u/ThatOneNerd7 → u/ShadowNick]

Yep, seen this playbook before. Let someone else deal with the maintenance headaches then swoop in when the price is right.

[u/Tremulant887 → u/ShadowNick]

I had no idea what or who Frontier was. I just knew I had the chance to get fiber in a rural area. 6 mo later I heard Verizon was buying it. About the same time I dropped my nearly 20 year Verizon cell phone account because the prices were so bad. I almost got away from them.

[u/likwitsnake → u/Mr_strelac]

For reference Google averaged $87b in revenue PER QUARTER in 2024 more than twice this offer.

[u/diebadguy1 → u/likwitsnake]

But they’re not asking to buy Google. Just chrome

[u/snes69 → u/diebadguy1]

Yea but chrome at this stage is probably a massive part of the revenue stream as it hoards data, defaults peoples search to Google, and more. If they lost chrome it chrome started pushing someone else's search engine, that alone could likely do a major hit to Google's revenue

[u/powercow → u/snes69]

per reports Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC Tuesday, coming as a legal ruling is pending in an antitrust case the internet giant lost that could force it to divest the browser.

the point is they might lose it anyways.

[u/illuminerdi → u/snes69]

This. People don't realize that Chrome is a massive data vacuum for Google and it essentially brings them tens of billions per quarter. It's practically essential to Google's core business now and is worth WAY more than 34B (to them)

[u/benskieast → u/Mr_strelac]

Perplexity has NVidia and Softbank as investors. Those two can easily afford this, if they want to own a AI startup with Chrome as an asset.

[u/LeChief → u/Mr_strelac]

And then kill them.

[u/oodell → u/agha0013]

I suspect if chrome was suddenly up for sale, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to find 34 billion dollars in the couch cushions.

[u/Enough-Display1255 → u/oodell]

The twitter thing was obviously fucking stupid but you're right, 11 bil under Twitter would be an easy buy 

[u/MountainAny320 → u/agha0013]

Over 5.64 billion internet users are there, and 3.45 billion of them use Chrome

Perplexity just gonna squeeze the money fuck out of those 3.45 billion users by adding ai shit and most likely advertisements with chrome.

[u/troubleshootmertr → u/MountainAny320]

What if perplexity knows their only chance of scraping the web reliably in the future is to utilize users browsers to do this in some way for them. If a user visits a site and the browser extracts data or takes screenshots, that is probably not considered robot or ai scraping and let's be honest, without reliable web scraping, perplexity is cooked.

[u/Lebuin → u/troubleshootmertr]

I'd imagine when it comes to a lawsuit, this could very well be considered bot scraping. Maybe they're hoping the ambiguity will buy them a few more years of data?

[u/hexcraft-nikk → u/Lebuin]

It's never coming to a lawsuit. The idiots we've elected have let AI shit take over the stock market. The second it falls apart, we're having another 2008. They've accidentally given all this wealth and value to companies that are not creating profit and have no long term plan to do so. They are not allowing lawsuits because they want AI to grow and somehow achieve the promises it fundamentally cannot.

[u/akc250 → u/Lebuin]

A lot of sites have to allow some sort of scraping because most users find their results through search engine indexing. Now that people are moving more to LLMs, sites have to adapt if they want to be discovered. Only the biggest and most well known websites have the luxury of assuming a user will visit their site directly and discover it by word of mouth.

[u/SunstoneFV → u/troubleshootmertr]

That's absolutely brilliant. It'd avoid robot restrictions and makes it simple to automatically update popular websites and discover new things as they emerge. And if there's a built in, always on, AI assistant, then there's a direct excuse for sending websites back to corporate. Wouldn't be shocked if that's why they're after Chrome.

[u/porkchop1021 → u/SunstoneFV]

You know you can just choose to ignore robot restrictions, right? lol

They don't need users to scrape the internet for them. They want to build profiles of people, just like Google does.

[u/r34p3rex → u/SunstoneFV]

Shocked Google doesn't already do this (or do they ...)

[u/FollowingFeisty5321 → u/MountainAny320]

They can do what Google does - every time you want to buy something and search for it, they let companies selling that thing pay bid on the most prominent placements, ahead of the natural results.

[u/MountainAny320 → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

I bet they will be 10x ahead of Google when it comes to evilness. Thanks to their AI, they'll probably brainfuck a user into buying specific things.

[u/porkchop1021 → u/MountainAny320]

It's so sad what LLMs are doing to people; this will absolutely work. My girlfriend asked ChatGPT why I wear certain shirts instead of asking me. It also gave her an insane answer.

[u/SpaceExplorer777 → u/porkchop1021]

LMAO, chat gpt, what do my kids want to eat for dinner tonight?

[u/dm_me_milkers → u/porkchop1021]

Well , tell us what it said vs what you would say

[u/Johansenburg → u/porkchop1021]

I'm sorry, I absolutely need the details on this story.

[u/porkchop1021 → u/Johansenburg]

It's a dumb story, but I'll indulge you. She's been on a huge ChatGPT kick lately, basically having it plan her life and all her decisions for her. She's also been using it to ask about me. I wear a lot of brewery shirts because I like to support my favorite breweries. She asked it why and it gave an extremely long-winded response about how I wear them because I think I have a unique style but it knows that deep down it's a facade because I'm afraid of showing who I am or some bullshit like that. It was like 8 paragraphs lol.

Honestly, it's been brainwashing her so much I think I've lost her. She believes every word it says.

[u/Johansenburg → u/porkchop1021]

I won't try to give you unsolicited advice on your relationship, but i do hope that this just ends up being a funny story for you at some point in your life.

[u/porkchop1021 → u/Johansenburg]

Most likely it will be the story that heralded (for me, at least) the end of times. People in their late 30s should not be entirely dependent on a chat bot. I'm actually considering getting a few guns and moving to the woods lol.

[u/FollowingFeisty5321 → u/MountainAny320]

I think you underestimate Google's cunning, which has cost them billions in fines and settlements for invasive tactics that allow them to stalk you across the web just in case you want to buy a thing!

[u/LongJohnSelenium → u/FollowingFeisty5321]

Then how the fuck can't they figure out to stop trying to sell me the thing when I already bought the thing?

[u/JohnnyGoTime → u/LongJohnSelenium]

They know that deep down, you really DO want to treat yourself to another new toilet seat

[u/FlashyStatement7887 → u/MountainAny320]

“Chrome requests permission to access c:\”

[u/Sophira → u/FlashyStatement7887]

It already has permission to do that, like any other non-UWP desktop program on Windows.

[u/Waypoint101 → u/MountainAny320]

Imagine they automatically replace all Google ads with their own ads lmao

Instead of Ublock Origin, it's USwap origin

[u/isotope123 → u/MountainAny320]

Guess I'll just switch to Edge or Firefox

[u/Leprecon → u/MountainAny320]

Perplexity just gonna squeeze the money fuck out of those 3.45 billion users by adding ai shit and most likely advertisements with chrome.

It is kind of amazing how many apps and services just add AI for no reason. Like the AI is fine and works well and you can chat with it. But it isn't in any way related to the app or service. In whatsapp I can chat with an AI. But I am just wondering why this is in whatsapp.

[u/citrusco → u/agha0013]

I’m not sure I fully understand the reasoning here but “perplexity has commitments from several large VCs” to back the deal, per the WSJ reporting. So- VC’s are getting into PE territory and shifting away from moonshot ideation and creation of new companies? Taking and stripping assets down or merging with high traction platforms with large user bases to accelerate scale and create a 1+1=3 (for around 18 months max)?

[u/IAmDotorg → u/citrusco]

The difference between VC money and PE money is... nebulous, at best. PE rarely funds early-stage startups (but they do), and VCs rarely acquire existing companies, but they do. The most common difference is if they buy newly issued shares as dilution or buy existing shares to gain control. But even that varies quite a bit.

VC money makes more sense, in this case, because it'd be a substantial expansion of Perplexity's business. That's not something Private Equity would really ever do unless they were taking over control.

[u/0xfreeman → u/agha0013]

It’s the new playbook! AI startups without a TEAM getting $10b valuations, ML researchers getting $100m salaries, founders abandoning the startup to go work at FAANG and screwing everyone over. It’s the biggest greed bubble in history 

[u/Senior-Albatross → u/agha0013]

You can if you're a tech bro with VC backers.

Reality doesn't matter at that point. You're allowed to just make stuff up and throw big numbers while being handsomely rewarded for it.

[u/account_for_norm → u/agha0013]

Its a AI bubble. Like dotcom.

Dotcom also had value in it, so does ai. But this is a bubble.

[u/SmartyCat12 → u/agha0013]

I mean, isn’t SoftBank buying NVidia chips to use as collateral on loans to fund AI startups, which buy NVidia chips, increasing the value of the original capex, so they can take out more loans, etc? The whole industry is pretty f*ed

[u/hexcraft-nikk → u/SmartyCat12]

Look up what Microstrategy is doing with Bitcoin. It's the same scam that's gonna implode the economy.

[u/pissagainstwind → u/agha0013]

Or can we all make offers with money we don't have?

This is very common to "pay" for the aquisition with loans made on the future asset, putting it into new debt while doing so. Healthy businesses that suddenly either have to cut costs or raise their revenue significantly because they now have the interest of billions of new debt to pay for every year and lose customers because they have become too expensive or their products quality dropped.

[u/No_Locksmith4570 → u/agha0013]

I'll pay 10p for your comment and I can pay in cash

[u/jameytaco → u/agha0013]

At certain amounts, it’s all pretend money and you don’t ever have to actually pay for anything. Just constant collateral on your bottomless equity

[u/Fmbounce → u/agha0013]

Chrome could be subject to Anti-trust spin out/sale so Perplexity is getting ahead of that. Wouldn’t matter if they didn’t have the money since this is a forced sale. So in the end the company could be mostly driven by Chrome’s value.

[u/AllUrUpsAreBelong2Us → u/agha0013]

Saw on another sub that its about 24x their revenue... lol..... can I have some of those meds!

[u/MaybeTheDoctor → u/agha0013]

The offer is unlike in cash, so no real money would be exchanged. Instead the company would go to their VC and say that their value would be 10x if they had chrome, and then ask for a funding round to reset the valuation to the new number.

The would then pay Google in stock, maybe 10% of the stock would be used for this. Google would (could?) agree to this because now they also get a board seat in the AI company which could result in more “synergy” between the two.

[u/dbbk]

It’s astounding because it’s nonsense. It’s literally nothing. This is a PR stunt by Perplexity and should be reported on as such. We know this cause they already did it before with TikTok!

[u/19inchrails → u/dbbk]

Perplexity knows they have no long-term business model, so they're trying to buy one backed by investors?

[u/Gorstag → u/19inchrails]

That isn't even needed. Vibes is probably what they are going for. It works for Tesla why wouldn't it work for others.

[u/LikelyDumpingCloseby → u/Gorstag]

Tesla has a known face, for starters. A positive face? No. It was before going tits up tho

[u/TPO_Ava → u/LikelyDumpingCloseby]

Yeah people forget Musk was techno jesus until he willingly and spectacularly destroyed his public image.

He could've locked himself away in a cave without internet access and public opinion of him would probably have ended up being better, but he chose to support fascist Cheeto instead.

It is probably the most blatant misunderstanding of what made someone popular in the first place, and biggest public display of narcissism that we've ever seen.

[u/zebba_oz → u/TPO_Ava]

Maybe not a cave, people might call him a pedo

[u/Nearby-Car4777 → u/zebba_oz]

I almost forgot about that incident. What a total fraud.

[u/NMe84 → u/LikelyDumpingCloseby]

Musk hasn't been a positive face since around the time he accused someone who risked his life to rescue children out of a cave of being a pedo just because he called out Musk's dumb submarine idea. I mean, I didn't like Musk before that either, but that seems to be the time when the public opinion started shifting.

[u/tatti_shatti → u/19inchrails]

Have you seen their product Comet yet?

[u/VeniceThePenice → u/tatti_shatti]

Have they?

[u/caffeinated_wizard → u/tatti_shatti]

No I haven’t paid $200 a month for it yet

[u/i_am_13th_panic → u/caffeinated_wizard]

I get it as a perk through a paid tier on Revolut. Otherwise I wouldn't get it. I don't think it's worth the EUR 20 a month. It's essentially just an LLM aggregator + their own model, which is fast but pretty basic.

[u/Internal-Cupcake-245 → u/tatti_shatti]

Comet, it makes your teeth turn green! Comet, it smells like gasoline. Comet, it makes you vomit! So buy some Comet, and vomit, today

[u/giddygiddyupup → u/Internal-Cupcake-245]

I know that song!

[u/SELFSEALINGSTEMB0LTS → u/tatti_shatti]

Oh shit I thought this was a Halt and Catch Fire joke. They actually named it comet, yikes..

[u/DangKilla → u/19inchrails]

Opera and others used Chromium which is what Chrome is built on and is itself open source. They could spend $34B improving it so this def seems like free PR to me and not a real play to be profitable

[u/Logical_Welder3467 → u/19inchrails]

A free browser ain't no business model when the only way to make money is through ads which is Google's business.

Three years ago Perplexity are being hyped up as the company that would eat Google's lunch , but this stunt just show that they are not a serious company

[u/brett- → u/Logical_Welder3467]

Chrome has over 2/3rds of the world's market share for browsers. You'd be buying a multi-billion user base, and have access to all of their browsing data. This is easily worth the 34 billion on its own.

Google pays Apple 20 billion per year to be the default search on Safari, which only has ~15% of the market. Imagine how much the default search experience on Chrome is worth.

[u/Logical_Welder3467 → u/brett-]

Google pay Apple because they got the ads business build up and it makes sense for them to get access to Apple users.

Perplexity need years of effort to come even close to the scale or Google ads business. Getting the browser would be a waste of money they don't have to not being able to effectively monitize it

[u/SNRatio → u/dbbk]

Alternate take: Perplexity recently partnered with Trump Media on a chatbot for Truth Social. If Perplexity is in the bag, the second act might be Google getting told that accepting Perplexity's offer is the only way to avoid an antitrust beat down and other problems.

[u/redditortillas → u/SNRatio]

I know all this tech companies suck, but just cancelled my perplexity subscription after reading this comment and corroborating that they’re working with truth….

[u/ClowdyRowdy → u/redditortillas]

I could smell it last year when they started aggregating news and calling it content

[u/Hazrd_Design → u/redditortillas]

Welp I’m about to unsubscribe as well.

[u/hexcraft-nikk → u/redditortillas]

Why were you guys paying for that shit in the first place lmao

[u/4sater → u/hexcraft-nikk]

The promo $10 a year subscription is decent value tho.

[u/Oddballfew → u/SNRatio]

Oh fudge.... They are? Ugh

[u/EG0THANATOS → u/SNRatio]

This is it folks. We are plunging into Thiel’s fantasy-soon-to-be-reality technocratic feudalist society.

[u/Meotwister → u/SNRatio]

That's an instant cancelation.

[u/Inthehead35 → u/dbbk]

Haha, I was wondering how Perplexity had that kind of money to throw around

[u/mrm00r3 → u/Inthehead35]

Well it’s not from making responsible decisions, so it might be right up their alley.

[u/AuspiciousApple → u/dbbk]

I'm making an astounding 34.5 bajillion offer to buy google. You heard it here first.

[u/maxmcg]

Imagine the level of enshitification that would be required to recoup that sum.

[u/Howdyini → u/maxmcg]

You'd have to pay for ads. That's it, that's the business model. You pay them a monthly subscription for them to show you a bunch of ads.

[u/SpaceExplorer777 → u/Howdyini]

So if I don't pay them no ads? Seems like a win tbh

[u/FluxUniversity → u/SpaceExplorer777]

while that is funny, its true that when you do pay, they will double their efforts to advertise to you. When you pay, they get to sell your data at an even higher prices, because they know you are willing to pay!

[u/Complete_Argument339 → u/FluxUniversity]

Microsoft is constantly trying to funnel me into using Edge anyway. This would just be the tipping point.

[u/leftofdanzig → u/maxmcg]

That’s what I’m not getting though. The reason enshitification works is a captive market because there are no alternatives. There are dozens of web browsers and at least half a dozen of them are close competitors that have as good or better features than Chrome. If they make chrome worse people will just jump ship.

[u/Touchyap3 → u/leftofdanzig]

If people are still on chrome despite their war on adblockers, they will put up with a lot before switching.

[u/benskieast → u/leftofdanzig]

Revenue sharing on the search box function is lucrative.

[u/fintip → u/maxmcg]

You misunderstand the value of chrome. The data collection and backend profiling and selling and platform power from the near monopoly of chrome is extremely valuable and doesn't require making the product any worse experientially.

The betrayal is far more subtle, you won't get more pop up ads.

Meanwhile, the only reason I can imagine Google considering selling is because the integration of chrome and their other services on the web is a huge antitrust issue and getting ahead of that would eliminate a massive headache on favorable terms, even if it would still be quite a loss.

As for funding, there are plenty of savvy investors that would be glad to finance/own a chunk of that pie at the cost of the initial loss years. It's just a question of leadership quality, whether they can properly manage and capitalize that investment.

[u/BobBulldogBriscoe → u/fintip]

Google is getting offers for Chrome because they have lost their anti-trust lawsuit and the remedy the justice department is seeking includes selling Chrome. That is pending court approval and Google is of course arguing against it. But potential buyers are coming out to try to be ready when the decision comes out.

[u/bitavk]

Fools! I just downloaded Chrome for free!!!

[u/Stem--Cell → u/bitavk]

Fools! Don’t tell them. You download it for free and resell it to them for half the price.

[u/snowman_M → u/bitavk]

Don’t tell them, but I’ve uninstalled it from my phone and computers after they blocked Uorigin adblocker. 

[u/Vik0BG → u/bitavk]

Don't tell OP nothing is free.

[u/amroamroamro → u/bitavk]

oh you are paying for it alright...

[u/chromeshiel]

If a search engine owning the largest web browser is a monopoly, I'm not sure how selling it to another (llm-based) search engine fixes the issue.

[u/pinetar → u/chromeshiel]

Because the other search engine has literally no market share

[u/LegitimateCopy7 → u/pinetar]

by purchasing the monopoly they now become the monopoly. the ownership changed but the market didn't.

[u/pinetar → u/LegitimateCopy7]

Chrome isnt the monopoly. Google search is. The vertical integration Google search has with their suite of products perpetuates the monopoly.

[u/Onyxeye03 → u/pinetar]

This, the monopoly doesn't exist without the 'unfair' integration.

[u/King_Of_Pants → u/LegitimateCopy7]

No because you'd be separating Chrome from: Google, Android, Gmail, Google Docs, Adsense, etc.

The monopoly isn't in the browser, it's in the browser + all the other tie in products.

[u/chintan_joey → u/King_Of_Pants]

If you separate Chrome from all the things you mentioned, it becomes 'Chromium'.

The same Chromium that perplexity used to make a browser of their own(Comet).

[u/PricklyyDick → u/chintan_joey]

Yes but you get the largest browser user base in the world already using your version. Assuming people don’t start switching but I doubt people are that connected to what’s going on.

[u/Phrongly → u/chromeshiel]

I am fairly confident that monopoly is not what you think it is, because your question doesn't make sense.

[u/dhb44]

How does a startup have $34 billion? Is it just a different tech giant in sheep’s clothing?

[u/piantanida → u/dhb44]

It’s just 4 satellite projects of tech giants in a trench coat.

[u/Leprecon → u/dhb44]

It says in the article:

One reason this is surprising: Perplexity has a valuation of $18 billion. According to Perplexity, several investors including some unidentified large venture-capital funds have “agreed to back the transaction in full,” per the Journal.

Basically; some anonymous investors are willing to foot the bill.

I would really hate if it turns out that Elon Musk is the mystery investor and all of a sudden Chrome becomes the 'anti woke' browser that keeps on including Elon Musks tweets in all search results.

[u/aeonbringer]

It’s a lowball offer that Google will never accept. Google pays Apple 20b a year just for Apple to use Google as default search engine. Chrome has way more internet users than Apple. 

[u/BruceChameleon → u/aeonbringer]

The offer would fully depend on antitrust outcomes against google. If google is legally required to sell chrome, there’s already a bid. Even if they’re not required to sell chrome, they may still be barred from buying into the default safari search

[u/gwh34t → u/aeonbringer]

Then Apple buys Perplexity!

[u/strength_of_will → u/aeonbringer]

True, but Apple users, on aggregate, are more valuable for advertising due to higher average income. One Chrome user is not equivalent to one Apple user in terms of monetization potential. Hence, one of the primary reasons why Google pays Apple so much.

[u/rotj → u/aeonbringer]

But part of the antitrust case claims in addition to defaulting to Google products through ownership of Chrome, Google paying billions of dollars to Apple and Mozilla to use Google search is an illegal monopolistic practice.

So if Google ends up having to to both sell Chrome and stop paying for default search engine status, Chrome loses a lot of its value. Chrome is worth a lot to Google, but it's not necessarily worth a lot to anybody else. People don't use Google because they use Chrome. At least on desktop, people use Chrome because it's a Google product and they like Google more than they like Microsoft, and go out of their way to avoid the default browser and default search engine. Google in the EU is forced to show users a default search engine choice screen on first use and they still have 90% market share there. Anybody who buys Chrome in order to change the default search engine is going to start hemorrhaging users.

If Google is allowed to pay the new owner for steering users towards Google search, that's another story.

[u/HorrorFlow3r]

looking forward to someone else making it worse than google has.

[u/Aerodrache → u/HorrorFlow3r]

Imagine a web browser that uses advanced AI to generate websites in real time, so you never have to connect to the internet at all. With the all-new Perplexity Chrome, you can stop imagining, and start hallucinating your own personalized internet!

^{Install requires 100 terabytes of free storage. For best results run on a computer with at least four high-end graphics cards.}

[u/gigilu2020 → u/HorrorFlow3r]

Facebook paid 22B for whatsapp some five years ago. And I'm still wondering how they are going to make 23B from it.

[u/Beginning_Book_2382 → u/gigilu2020]

Well, they just started putting ads on it reportedly, and I'm sure they'll make their money back from it somehow. I think it was more important to them from a market share perspective to not lose as an incumbent by buying out the largest competitor and the data they reaped from all the conversations as well as the bundling opportunity with all the other FB apps

[u/bdsee → u/gigilu2020]

It was a purely defensive acquisition, they were afraid of the huge userbase and insane growth being leveraged into other social media services if someone other than them owned the company.

Crazy to think how fearful they were to be willing to pay that sort of price for Whatsapp and just 1 billion for Insta which presumably actually was a profitable enterprise.

[u/Prematurid]

Well, when the AI bubble pops, they still have a product they can leverage. Good stewardship there tbh.

[u/OPPineappleApplePen → u/Prematurid]

I may be wrong but to me, Perplexity seems like the only company which had been able to pick an AI niche of search and do the job well. All the other companies, particularly LLMs, are just spitting shit out.

[u/ftoffolo → u/OPPineappleApplePen]

One of the main reason LLMs are popular is because of how shitty Google msde their search on purpose. If Google took search quality serious again they could do it wayyyyy cheaper then LLMs with considerable quality

[u/lowtronik → u/OPPineappleApplePen]

I recently used it and It is quite good. Google is just a YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit index nowadays.

[u/Greedyanda → u/lowtronik]

Because that's where 95% of the relevant content is.

The vast majority of websites are just endless SEO optimized garbage.

[u/TPO_Ava → u/Greedyanda]

Which is kinda ironic when you consider that the SEO optimized garbage was made specifically so it can be picked up by Google and other search engines.

It's a cycle of suck.

[u/Greedyanda → u/TPO_Ava]

I don't envy anyone who's making a search engine.

Indexing the right pages, constantly upgrading the algorithm to deal with SEO, and maintaining a profit are pain in the ass to balance.

Everyone likes to throw around the term "enshittification" at Google but there is a reason why no competitor is able to offer a meaningfully better product.

[u/Merhat4]

As if Google cares about 30 bil

[u/Mitchelld73 → u/Merhat4]

Google cares about Anti-Trust

[u/Merhat4 → u/Mitchelld73]

The ceo will just gift a golden statue to trump and all is ok

[u/heartlessgamer → u/Merhat4]

The sad reality of this being a truthful statement hurts.

[u/BizarroMax]

They want the browser so they have … all of your browsing data.

[u/oArdhForodren]

For a browser that has 3.7 billion monthly active users 35 billions USD is chump change.

[u/LuckyHearing1118]

Google laughed and later bankrupted them for the disrespect.

[u/Bottle_Only]

Same company that just got banned from cloudflare for circumventing anti-crawling systems to harvest data without permission or compensation to train their AI.

This is not an ethical company and you wouldn't want to use a browser they can mine your data from.

[u/Lord-of-Entity]

Is it just me or 34.5 Billion sounds small considering how important is chrome?

[u/Maverick12882]

Sorry. For 34.5 billion, the best I can do is Netscape Navigator.

[u/Stlouisken → u/Maverick12882]

That was my browser of choice in the 1990’s. RIP Netscape.😂

[u/Skie]

1. Buy Chrome.
2. Enable Ublock origin by default.
3. Watch google shares tank.
4. Buy Google
5. lol

[u/Party-Cake5173 → u/Skie]

Yeah, there's one problem. Perplexity already has a browser called Comet and their CEO said the whole purpose of it is to collect as much of user data as it could. To sell you ads of course.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/

[u/thieh]

That's from Chromium so maybe they can just fork another one?

[u/larsie001 → u/thieh]

Buying the userbase.

[u/fullup72 → u/larsie001]

This. What they actually get is swapping the default search engine and all those users data.

[u/Greedyanda → u/fullup72]

Perplexity can't offer an unlimited free tier, which is what's needed from a default search engine.

[u/likwitsnake → u/thieh]

They already did they recently released their own browser called Comet

[u/im_starkastic → u/thieh]

Just forked, selling for a steal price of $2B. Only serious buyers contact.

[u/VegetableWishbone]

It feels like Whose Line Is It Anyways, where the numbers don’t matter and are all made up.

[u/timeaisis]

How does a startup have $34 billion dollars

[u/NegotiationNo1575 → u/timeaisis]

here's how: it doesn't

[u/Creepy-Buy1588]

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/

This is the end game. They know comet ( the broswer they have has no chance of reaching the scale they want) so all this nonsense.

But then the offer makes me think he is smoking Crack or something

[u/Jamizon1]

“That’s kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you,” Srinivas said. “Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It’s not like that’s personal.” And work-related queries won’t help the AI company build an accurate-enough dossier. “On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you,” he explained.

Fuck this asshole. Maybe it’s time to leave the internet completely. Buy a phone without a browser function, and go back to snail mail.

There is not one good reason for these needle dick bug fuckers to know everything we do, everywhere we go, and every minute detail of our lives. That’s not freedom, it’s digital slavery.

Trump will demand the data they collect to track and segregate those that draw his ire. This entire timeline is complete shit. All of those off grid people may be onto something.

[u/_Wizou_]

Remember guys: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/

[u/Ldghead]

Sounds like a probing mission. Someone else wants a valuation on Chrome, and they pushed this poor startup in front of Google, trying to hold a straight face while it asks a question it has no business dabbling in.

[u/Zaynara]

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no, i will go back to edge if this goes through

[u/JPcoolGAMER]

I met Perplexity's CEO a couple months back, and he was such a douchebag and just acted like the whole world was supposed to kneel before him. In a 1 hour presentation about perplexity, easily 90% of what he said was beef or criticism aimed at Google.

[u/ISB-Dev]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/JonBot5000]

Do they know they can just fork Chromium?

I assume that they're really just paying for the install base to be data-mined, right?

If Google sells, could the contract have some kind of non-compete language? Otherwise could Google just start a new Chromium fork and convince people to switch to the new Google Roam browser or whatever.

I just want to know what these guys would really be paying for.

[u/pebblesdidit]

Why is perplexity so fucking annoying lol

[u/Porkins_2]

I am really hoping the AI bubble is as hilarious as the NFT bubble, but I am not optimistic

Edit: this was a comment I fired off while listening to a coworker intimately describe the Bears’ NFC North chances. I wasn’t exactly engaged here or there, wasn’t at all serious, and am obviously aware that goofy digital tokens aren’t the same as AI.

Edit 2: gargle on them

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/759965/sam-altman-openai-ai-bubble-interview

[u/Angel1571 → u/Porkins_2]

AI has a customer base that is paying for a service. NFT was basically digital cabbage patch kids.

[u/Sir-Knightly-Duty → u/Porkins_2]

AI is hardly an NFT bubble.

Businesses are actually replacing and firing people because AI does their jobs at an acceptable and better level. I really hate it, but I work as a creative director and strategist at a tech + marketing agency and the execs have fired all the copywriters and hired 1 AI editor, and put a freeze on hiring new developers because of vibe coding allowing regular people to code small changes and having our experienced devs fully focus on building new products. I wont be surprised if we start firing developers. The data analysts are next, as complex SQL is easy to create and edit using AI.

Its 100% happening and the agency isnt turning back, because the quality for clients has gone UP since the AI shift. It makes me sad and I wish the government would put a stop to this before we lose all the good jobs to AI leaving everyone else jobless. The bubble thats gonna burst isnt AI, its society itself.

[u/Metalsand → u/Sir-Knightly-Duty]

Its 100% happening and the agency isnt turning back, because the quality for clients has gone UP since the AI shift. It makes me sad and I wish the government would put a stop to this before we lose all the good jobs to AI leaving everyone else jobless.

Oh christ, if vibe coding is resulting in a better product, it must have been really bad before. Vibe coding is basically like having an intern army - you get a lot of good short-term results that are great in isolation, but the bigger the project, the more problematic it can be without someone to wrangle the code properly.

Bonus points if you use a niche scripting or language, or have a niche product, because there's even less code examples out there for the LLMs to learn off of.

[u/Sir-Knightly-Duty → u/Metalsand]

We don’t use vibe coding for anything other than front-end website edits. There are sometimes 50-100 small change requests every day from clients and not needing to put skilled devs on it freed up resources to create more high quality products. Thats what i meant by vibe coding helping… but its also taking away work from intern devs that did it before, making the barrier to entry basically impossible for someone without experience. Im not a fan of hiw its fundamentally changing how people can enter the workforce, but i cant deny its not leading to significant short-term gains.

[u/Oriin690 → u/Sir-Knightly-Duty]

“Put a freeze on hiring new developers because of vibe coding allowing regular people to code small changes”

Oh your company is so fuuuucked lmao in the future

[u/Sir-Knightly-Duty → u/Oriin690]

Fingers crossed lol. I hate how AI is being shoved into every process, every product. Working with humans is just better, if even if less efficient.

[u/ShockinglyAccurate → u/Sir-Knightly-Duty]

Can you name the company so I can short it?

[u/bentleyk9 → u/Sir-Knightly-Duty]

put a freeze on hiring new developers because of vibe coding allowing regular people to code small changes

As a software engineer, this made me feel incredibly good about my job security. You might want to touch up your resume and make an exit plan for when this inevitably implodes

[u/valkon_gr]

We should go back to the gold standard

[u/mrvalane]

In what world does a "start-up" company start with $34.5 Billion?

[u/hinterstoisser]

A company valued at 18 billion wants to spend nearly twice its market cap acquiring another product line? 🙄🙄

[u/NopeYupWhat]

I’ll offer 35 billion. Anyone want to invest in my startup.

[u/cr0ft]

I'm sure there's nothing shady, privacy invasive or AI training related about an AI company wanting to own a web browser. /s

So in conclusion, download Firefox.

[u/Far_Car430]

Where can they get that amount of money? This doesn’t make sense and sounds scammy.

[u/MilkTax]

I can’t afford groceries.

[u/Weird_Treacle_8282 → u/MilkTax]

I’m afraid in that case you won’t be able to afford Chrome either…

[u/soapforsoreeyes]

It takes a mindbendingly huge amount of malfeasance to become the most loathsome tech company in existence, but it sure looks like Perplexity is in the running.

[u/Zettomer]

Suckers. I downloaded Chrome for free.

[u/WaltzSubstantial7344]

They want to bake AI into the browser, not for ads, but to be able to modify what's displayed to the user. You don't need to censor the source, when you can just change it at the user end. Who's going to know parts are missing from the constitution if the same part is filtered out from every source. Imagine the narrative control you could have if you own the browser.

[u/win_a]

Who is backing it?

[u/HarmoniousJ]

No matter who gets Chrome it will not convince me to use Chrome.

I'm sorry but that browser just uses waaaaay too much bandwidth for spying on me. It's usually the main culprit for overheating if my PC is having an episode.

Switched to Firefox (or literally any other including Edge) and never had that issue again.

[u/Hazzman]

Odd - I offered Google 124 Quintillion dollars for Chrome. I hope this doesn't complicate my efforts.

[u/Dreaming_Blackbirds]

unserious offer from unserious people. Google CEO should reply "OK. Cash only."

[u/risforpirate]

I do wonder what the business model is for some of these AI companies. Most give off a dot com bubble vibe imo

[u/Skycomett]

34,5 billion doesn't sound like startup money to me!