AI platform Perplexity AI offered to buy Chrome for 29 billion euros amid antitrust pressure on Google

The artificial intelligence platform Perplexity AI has made an unexpected offer – to acquire the Google Chrome browser for 29 billion euros, while the tech giant is under threat of forced sale due to an antitrust case in the US. This is reported by UNN with reference to EuroNews.

Details

Perplexity AI, one of the leading artificial intelligence platforms alongside ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini, has made an unprecedented offer to acquire the Chrome browser, as Google faces accusations in US courts of monopolizing online search.

In a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company, Perplexity offered "$34.5 billion (29 billion euros) in cash for Chrome," Reuters reported.

This offer is particularly shocking, as Perplexity is only worth $18 billion (15.35 billion euros). A Perplexity spokesperson confirmed the "all-cash" offer.

What is Perplexity

Perplexity AI is an artificial intelligence platform that provides answers in conversational and understandable language, avoiding traditional lists of SEO-generated links, as in Google or Bing. Unlike ChatGPT or Gemini, the service works with "live" search, not static copies of the internet.

In August, Truth Social - Donald Trump's social network - began beta testing the integration of Perplexity AI into its own Truth Search AI system. The company emphasizes that it only provides the technology and does not influence the editorial policy of Truth Search.

Antitrust case

The company came into the spotlight amid the antitrust case "USA v. Google LLC". In August 2024, a federal court ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the search engine market, spending billions of dollars to secure its default search status in Safari and on Android. This created a closed system: more users - more data - better algorithms - even more users.

The US Department of Justice proposes radical changes - the sale of the Chrome browser, the abandonment of default search agreements, and mandatory data sharing with competitors. Google's attempt to block these demands was rejected, and the final hearings in the case are scheduled for 2025. It is in this context that Perplexity AI made a cash offer of 29 billion euros for Chrome.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, in an April interview with TIME, called Google "the main competitor" and stated that the search engine's advertising business model hinders the implementation of AI-powered answers. Perplexity's investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and the company's technical infrastructure is provided by Microsoft Azure. Although the company has attracted several unnamed sources of funding for the Chrome deal, there is no official confirmation of Bezos's or Microsoft's involvement.

Earlier, UNN wrote that OpenAI is interested in acquiring the Chrome browser if the court orders Google to sell it as part of an antitrust review. Browser integration would allow for the creation of a convenient interface.