Perplexity AI has made an offer for Google Chrome, but the browser is (still) not for sale.
Perplexity AI makes an offer to purchase Google Chrome for 34.5 billion dollars, reports Reuters. The AI company aims to get ahead of other potential interested parties, although Google’s web browser is (still) not for sale. The U.S. court ruled that Google illegally strengthened and then abused its monopoly position in the search world. As a result, the U.S. DoJ wants Google to sell its Chrome browser, but the conviction is not yet final.
Unsolicited Offer
Perplexity AI submitted the offer for Google Chrome unsolicited. The company is ahead of the curve out of fear that other competitors might beat them to it. Perplexity is not the first company to show interest. In May, it was revealed that OpenAI also showed interest in the web browser.
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How Perplexity would finance this acquisition is still unclear. 34.5 billion dollars is nearly double what Perplexity itself is worth. According to documents reviewed by Reuters, Perplexity would invest three billion dollars in the browser over two years and keep the Chromium code open source. Is 34.5 billion dollars a good offer? Competitor DuckDuckGo estimated the browser’s value at at least 50 billion dollars.