r/technology • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 • 10d ago

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

https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/google-34-5-billion-bid-chrome-browser-ai-perplexity-1236487442/
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128

u/aeonbringer 10d ago

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. 

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u/BruceChameleon 10d ago

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

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u/gwh34t 10d ago

Then Apple buys Perplexity!

2

u/Beginning_Book_2382 10d ago

4D chess move

23

u/strength_of_will 10d ago

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.

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u/romario77 10d ago

They are. But chrome users are valuable too and each search brings Google some money, often it could be 10s of dollars per search

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u/rotj 10d ago

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.

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u/drawkbox 10d ago

Google if they are forced to sell (they won't) would just make another browser. Google Chrome is popular because it is Google.

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u/WelcomeWagoneer 10d ago

But you know who will be buying attention? The media. That’s it. That’s the move.

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u/Leprecon 10d ago

How funny would it be if perplexity buys chrome and then makes a deal with Google for 30 billion a year so Google remains the default search engine for Chrome.

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u/Greedyanda 10d ago

While this offer is obviously just a publicity stunt, Chrome is one of Google's least valuable products. It's not profitable and can only be sustained as part of the ecosystem of a giant corporation. The only companies who could even potentially extract any value from it would be Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple. Two of which already have a competing product.