Perplexity’s offer comes as Google faces pressure from the US Department of Justice to divest following a recent antitrust suit.
This last year, Google has gone through a slew of antitrust lawsuit losses in court, with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) pressuring the company to divest out of its popular search engine, Chrome. Now, AI company Perplexity is looking to strike while the iron is hot and get Chrome. It has offered a deal to Google to buy the search engine to for an alleged $34.5 billion.
Word of Perplexity’s offer to buy Google Chrome was announced this week, as reported by Wall Street Journal. Perplexity reportedly put forth an unsolicited bid for Chrome on Tuesday. Perplexity itself was valued at $18 billion at the time of the bid, but has claimed that it has secured several investors that will assist in backing the deal. Google itself has not responded to the bid at this time.
Source: Google
Perplexity is one of the companies going heavy into the race for AI technology development. It already employs an AI-powered search engine that is meant to give users simple answers to questions, as well as linking to relevant material on the internet. The group has its own AI-powered browser called Comet, but the resources and brand identity of Google Chrome would be quite the boon to Perplexity’s ongoing activities and research.
There’s no word on if Google will sell or not at this time, but with the US DOJ putting pressure on it due to recent antitrust lawsuits, the company may have to act sooner than later. Stay tuned to the Google topic as we continue to watch for news and updates.
