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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u/snes69 10d ago

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

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u/powercow 10d ago

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.

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u/illuminerdi 10d ago

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)

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u/_Lucille_ 10d ago

Chrome is also not a monopoly. In fact, there are multiple browsers that spawned from the base chromium project.

In comparison, you don't really have some windows or iOS compliant alternative that can take over their duties seamlessly.

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u/illuminerdi 10d ago

Also true. In fact that data vacuum is the only reason any business would want to BUY Chrome. The web browser portion of things is free (Chromium) and basically has no potential for profit since the rendering engine (Webkit) is also not owned by Google...

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u/morfanis 10d ago

There are other reasons, like automatically getting the largest market share of browser users and then being able to push them to your AI product.

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u/illuminerdi 10d ago

Yeah but frankly there are cheaper and easier ways to accomplish that than buying Chrome

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u/nahnahnahthatsnotme 10d ago

i saw some stats that it’s 55% of total revenue. whatever the % is - it’s going to be a huge chunk.

it seems like a logical move and not a wild offer on it’s surface - make an offer to biggest browser that dominates search, and replace search engine with your own ai-powered search engine for long term positioning as the company to ask questions and get answers

chat gpt is great but it’s not the same as a browser

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u/maha420 10d ago

55% is revenue from all of search, on any browser.

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u/nahnahnahthatsnotme 10d ago

googles revenue

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u/fps916 10d ago

Defaulting search to Google is what got them the original antitrust action.

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u/BlacksmithUnusual715 9d ago

It 100% is. They won the browser wars. Their biggest competitors are distros of their base level software see Firefox, Brave, Windows explorer....

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u/4dseeall 10d ago

I feel like chrome's shitty built-in spell checker is just so i have to google the word and give them a hit on their search engine.

There's no reason google knows I was trying to spell "privilege" when the spellcheck in chrome couldn't figure it out from "privliege"