Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome
"Artificial-intelligence startup Perplexity offered to purchase Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant’s web-search dominance."
[Katherine Blunt in the Wall Street Journal]
The thing I’ve learned about tech companies breaking down monopolies is that many of them just want to become the next monopoly rather than establish a genuinely different power dynamic.
So in a world where Google may be forced to divest itself from its Chrome browser in the wake of an antitrust ruling, Perplexity’s offer to buy it from them makes sense. And in a world where OpenAI can raise $40B in a single funding round, Perplexity offering $34.5B to buy the browser isn't outrageous on their part. It potentially solves a problem for Google, and would help them establish dominance as a part of the next generation of tech companies.
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.
[Link]
