Google’s dominance of the search engine and online advertising market has come under intense scrutiny, with the technology giant embroiled in years of legal wrangling as part of two antitrust cases.<\/p>\n
A US federal judge is expected to issue a ruling this month that could see Google being ordered to break up its search business.<\/p>\n
The company has said it would appeal such a ruling, saying the idea of spinning off Chrome was an “unprecedented proposal” that would harm consumers and security.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Perplexity told the BBC that its bid marks an “important commitment to the open web, user choice, and continuity for everyone who has chosen Chrome.”<\/p>\n
As part of the proposed takeover, Perplexity said it would continue to have Google as the default search engine within Chrome, though users could adjust their settings.<\/p>\n
The firm said it would also maintain and support Chromium, a widely-used open-source platform that supports Chrome and other browsers including Microsoft Edge and Opera.<\/p>\n
Perplexity did not respond to queries about how the proposed deal would be funded. In July, it had an estimated value of $18bn.<\/p>\n
Technology industry investor and start-up founder Heath Ahrens called Perplexity’s move a “stunt, and nowhere near Chrome’s true value, given its unmatched data and reach.”<\/p>\n
“The offer isn’t serious, but if someone like Sam Altman or Elon Musk tripled it, they could genuinely secure dominance for their AI,” he added.<\/p>\n
It is also not clear whether Google is considering selling the platform, Tomasz Tunguz from Theory Ventures told the BBC.<\/p>\n
He also said the offer is a lot lower than the browser is worth “given the value of Chrome is likely significantly higher \u2013 maybe ten times more valuable than the bid or more.”<\/p>\n
Perplexity’s app is among the rising players in the generative AI race, alongside more well-known platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.<\/p>\n
Last month, it launched an AI-powered browser called Comet. <\/p>\n
The company made headlines earlier this year after offering to buy the American version of TikTok, which faces a deadline in September to be sold by its Chinese owner or be banned in the US.<\/p>\n
Perplexity has reportedly drawn interest from technology giants including Apple and Facebook-owner Meta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google’s dominance of the search engine and online advertising market has come under intense scrutiny, with the technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-63268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}