AI search biz Perplexity has offered to pay about twice as much as it is worth to acquire Chrome from Google.
A company spokesperson confirmed that the nearly three-year-old startup, with an estimated value of $18 billion, has proposed paying $34.5 billion to take Chrome and the associated Chromium open-source project off Google’s hands.
Unidentified venture capital firms would supply the necessary funds. Perplexity just launched its own browser, Comet, based on Chromium.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The search giant hasn’t indicated any interest in selling Chrome, but it could be required to do so if US District Judge Amit Mehta deems that to be an appropriate remedy to restore search market competition.
A year ago, following a 10-week bench trial, Judge Mehta ruled [PDF] that Google acted unlawfully to monopolize online search services. He is expected to decide the appropriate remedy before the end of the month. One scenario under consideration is the forced divestiture of Chrome, a possibility that has alarmed Mozilla and piqued the interest of would-be search rivals.
During that trial, ChatGPT head of product Nick Turley reportedly said OpenAI would be interested in buying Chrome if Google were forced to sell. OpenAI is also reportedly preparing to launch its own browser.
Google has said it plans to appeal the ruling.
Chrome is the most widely used web browser in the world, with an estimated global market share of about 67.9 percent, according to StatCounter. That represents roughly 3.8 billion users out of a total of 5.65 billion global internet users – a hugely powerful distribution channel with the potential to reach an audience larger than Facebook’s.
The possibility that AI-based search might supplant traditional keyword search has given hope to AI ventures like Perplexity and OpenAI, and to past monopolists like Microsoft, which have struggled to gain market share from Google.
Microsoft in 2023 added AI to its Bing search service, which initially didn’t go well and hasn’t substantially changed the dynamics of the search market. This may have something to do with Google’s countermeasures, in the form of AI Overviews – the Chocolate Factory’s own application of AI to search.
Perplexity, for all the hype surrounding the company (not to mention the copyright lawsuits), hasn’t made much of a dent either. According to an OpenAI competitive intelligence document [PDF] presented as a trial exhibit by the US Justice Department during the search trial, Perplexity was handling 20 million daily messages in December 2024, while Google’s AI Overviews served 595 million queries daily or about 7 percent of an estimated 8.3 billion daily search queries processed by Google.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT appears to be the more plausible search competitor. The chatbot service, which entered the search market last October, supposedly exceeds Google AI Overviews in daily queries by some small percentage. The trial exhibit has been redacted to hide the claimed amount of that excess and it’s unclear whether Google AI Overviews have gained ground since the trial.
If AI alone hasn’t remade the search market, the tech industry nonetheless expects Google to be weakened by court rulings, not only as a consequence of the search case overseen by Judge Mehta but due to US District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s online advertising decision in April and to US District Judge James Donato’s Android ruling last October.
The result is a new browser war as established browser makers add AI to their browsers and AI firms launch browsers to distribute their AI services. Almost every browser maker, with the exception of Vivaldi, has been adding or experimenting with generative AI services, based on the expectation that users want natural language interaction and automation.
It now falls to Judge Mehta to decide the rules of engagement. ®