NAL, but IMO it's legal & political maneuvering. DOJ asked Judge Mehta to consider forcing divestiture of Chrome after Google was found to illegally maintained a search monopoly. If it's determined the divestiture is feasible, especially with an existing more-or-less "credible buyer" at the ready, it looks executable. The offer is basically crafted to fit the DOJ/regulator concerns, ie everything is build around "least disruptive": keeping Google the default search engine, etc. Furthermore, just by doing this, they are putting ideas out there about what an "acceptable buyer" is and puts a number to the discussion about "what Chrome is worth". Purely remedies chess and an attempt to own the narrative. Google's going to say no, at least as-is, but this certainly throws a wrench in the works. Lots more moves to be made.
Unless Google is banned from providing a browser entirely, they'll just re-fork Webkit and release another browser, and it will very quickly replace Chrome usage.
Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.
It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
Presumably they would include a clause they can't do that? If not, why wouldn't they simply fork Chromium if they haven't already. They must be bargaining that there will be some lockout period and regulatory scrutiny that would prevent them from immeadiately rebranding chrome and repointing all the download links to a new repo.
It's not about stopping people from making a browser and a search engine and tying them together, it's about abusing your web browser monopoly to promote your search monopoly (and vice versa) to keep competition out
The rules apply to everyone it's just that no one else has a search or browser monopoly
Microsoft had a browser monopoly at one point and it should have happened to them but they generously pissed it away
Google pretty clearly has a monopoly on search though, and their ownership of Android + the #1 web browser in the world maintains this. I don't think a new fork of Webkit would change this argument.
They lose the brand so that's the most important part. And chrome has far divestd from chromium in all the important ways Google makes money. It'd take years for chrome to to lose its marketshare even if Google had a chrome clone made tomorrow.
If anything, they may try to start from scratch, like with Fuschia. In which case the anti-trust was a success in making companies compete again.
> Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.
In the EU, they're forced to ask you which browser and which search engine you want.
> It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
Letting one instance of blatant anti competitive and anti consumer behaviour fly because others are allowed isn't the way to go. Google are a bit monopolistic abuser, fix that. Apple are too? Good, that's the next job.
> I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
> But that's not what will happen.
That's how the EU is approaching with the DMA and DSA.
These marketing stunts from Perplexity made me stop using their product. For me, it's an indicator that they don't believe in their product, so there's no reason for me to do it either.
I've tried to use Perplexity after reading all of the hype, seeing it praised by so many VCs, and seeing it appear on so many different lists of essential AI tools.
Yet most of my Perplexity queries have produced poor results. It always feels like they optimized for minimizing latency and producing output that feels good instead of doing actual research. Most of the time it feels like the same quality of results I'd get from skimming the top of the Google search page summaries if I didn't filter out the spammy site.
The product could be more useful if it spent several minutes researching, but that would defeat the wow factor that I'm sure their product managers are prioritizing.
Perplexity had a business case for one hot minute there, before OAI, Anthropic and Google all added search to their models, but now that have it, Perplexity doesn’t have a reason to exist anymore. They’re kind of the poster child for “if you don’t have your own model, you’re basically VC-funded market fit research for the companies which do, who will go on to copy and crush you.”
Even during ChatGPT peak, when HN was buzzing with every other post being how ChatGPT/other LLM product replaced Google for them, I could not honestly switch, or meaningfully reduce my Google usage.
Until Perplexity.
It was the AI product that actually reduced my Google usage. Even with AI mode directly built into Google homepage now, Perplexity is still better.
It has basically zero hallucination, each para/entry backed by a URL, and lower latentcy than any other LLM product.
I don't know why you find it bad. I use it daily, and for serious searches.
It has fundamentally changed the way I search the web/ask questions in the web.
I remember when the hype first started around it, it was unusably slow, and produced poor results. Granted, I haven't tried it lately to see if latency improved, but the hype versus product state at the time, really turned me off from the product.
Both Kagi and Perplexity are customers of Brave, btw. See https://brave.com/api or just ask if you have questions. Will answer what I can for anyone curious.
self-hosted SearXNG [1] pointed at the lot of them. All the results, none of the tracking and some insight in which subjects are suppressed by which search engine.
i really enjoy perplexity. i recommend taking advantage of one of the o2 resale deals out there so that its like $7/yr instead of $240 and let the VCs eat the rest. I don’t know of any better ai access deals out there. It’s absurd and unsustainable.
These are consumer products that are basically commodities to all but the largest power users. If you loved their product than this approach should make you ecstatic as its the only way they'll be able to survive as an independent.
OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.
My reason is much more petty, but their refusal to allow me to sign-in with either a password+2fa or passkey and instead force me to open my email for a magic link has pushed me away.
Magic links are an order of magnitude safer than passwords, and the majority of regular users will never set up 2FA, so this raises the base safety for all
A social media ad company would be the least favourable. At least Google's central ad business is based off of search queries the user gives to them willingly for value.
This was the case, like, 20 years ago. Google is effectively an ad company that makes tech — including a browser — to gather more data from users and sell ads.
> The only companies that should be allowed to buy Chrome are non-profits and companies promising to sell it for a fee (preferably not a subscription).
I am not sure if a single fee works. Browsers are too important and hard to maintain. What if people had paid single fee for Chrome 15 years ago for non-profit?
A $14B to $18B dollar company offering an all stock deal worth about 2x as much as its market cap.
This isn't a serious offer, its a publicity stunt. Google would effectively own the entire company short of some mind blowing multiple expansion here.
Watch for Perplexity to be raising money in the next 6 months. But given this stunt it looks like they think their growth is over and they've peaked as a company.
"The AI says I should raise $34.5 billion from investors and make a bid for Google's browser."
I wonder if they've thought about what it'll cost to keep Chrome dominant as a platform including the effort that goes into securing it on an ongoing basis!
I have a sense this is one of those issues that people don't know how they should feel, but some narrative of how we as enlightened technologists should feel will form.
On one hand, people don't like Google owning chrome as they have a huge influence on open web and they're essentially an ad company
On the other hand, if in the hands of an AI company, this could mean using your data for models, VC incentives, less open in general. Perplexity doesn't have a money printing machine to forever subsidize a browser.
I still don't understand how forcing Google to sell Chrome achieves any of the regulator's goals. The only piece that matters is how Google controls both ends of the advertising market. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is ushering this penalty because its a public slap on the wrist that they can go home laughing about.
Why buy Chrome anyway? Put that $34.5 billion into a team that forks and develops Chromium. Ban Google from developing browsers as well as paying for search preference in other browsers.
Perplexity are trying to find their place so they try whatever they can. Web search, shopping search, finance search, browser, deep research, anything. They were first to do a good job on web search but ChatGPT and Claude caught up and now Perplexity, who doesn't have their own family of models like the other two, is shooting in the dark.
Especially on Android - which is the most used OS in the world.
It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
But that's not what will happen.
The rules apply to everyone it's just that no one else has a search or browser monopoly
Microsoft had a browser monopoly at one point and it should have happened to them but they generously pissed it away
If anything, they may try to start from scratch, like with Fuschia. In which case the anti-trust was a success in making companies compete again.
In the EU, they're forced to ask you which browser and which search engine you want.
> It seems strange to ban Google from offering a Search Engine, when all the other big tech companies can get into any field just fine, but the legal system is primarily a weapon for corruption these days, so who knows.
Letting one instance of blatant anti competitive and anti consumer behaviour fly because others are allowed isn't the way to go. Google are a bit monopolistic abuser, fix that. Apple are too? Good, that's the next job.
> I mean, sure, if you want to start limiting what big companies do, and there's some fairness in how it's applied, fine.
> But that's not what will happen.
That's how the EU is approaching with the DMA and DSA.
Yet most of my Perplexity queries have produced poor results. It always feels like they optimized for minimizing latency and producing output that feels good instead of doing actual research. Most of the time it feels like the same quality of results I'd get from skimming the top of the Google search page summaries if I didn't filter out the spammy site.
The product could be more useful if it spent several minutes researching, but that would defeat the wow factor that I'm sure their product managers are prioritizing.
Even during ChatGPT peak, when HN was buzzing with every other post being how ChatGPT/other LLM product replaced Google for them, I could not honestly switch, or meaningfully reduce my Google usage.
Until Perplexity.
It was the AI product that actually reduced my Google usage. Even with AI mode directly built into Google homepage now, Perplexity is still better.
It has basically zero hallucination, each para/entry backed by a URL, and lower latentcy than any other LLM product.
I don't know why you find it bad. I use it daily, and for serious searches.
It has fundamentally changed the way I search the web/ask questions in the web.
It’s reduced my legacy search engine usage significantly.
Is there a better product? ChatGPT with web search enabled?
I guess Google’s AI is probably good, I just haven’t used Google in a while as I switched to DuckDuckGo.
Ever since deep thinking came out
https://kagi.com/
Both Kagi and Perplexity are customers of Brave, btw. See https://brave.com/api or just ask if you have questions. Will answer what I can for anyone curious.
[1] https://docs.searxng.org/
OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.
Don't make using your product annoying.
Perplexity already has a browser. At this point, this is complete desperation from them for attention.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-unde...
It's not a profitable business to be in, and Perplexity would just do the exact same thing that might force Google to sell Chrome.
The only companies that should be allowed to buy Chrome are non-profits and companies promising to sell it for a fee (preferably not a subscription).
I am not sure if a single fee works. Browsers are too important and hard to maintain. What if people had paid single fee for Chrome 15 years ago for non-profit?
This isn't a serious offer, its a publicity stunt. Google would effectively own the entire company short of some mind blowing multiple expansion here.
Watch for Perplexity to be raising money in the next 6 months. But given this stunt it looks like they think their growth is over and they've peaked as a company.
I wonder if they've thought about what it'll cost to keep Chrome dominant as a platform including the effort that goes into securing it on an ongoing basis!
On one hand, people don't like Google owning chrome as they have a huge influence on open web and they're essentially an ad company
On the other hand, if in the hands of an AI company, this could mean using your data for models, VC incentives, less open in general. Perplexity doesn't have a money printing machine to forever subsidize a browser.
It'll be interesting which narrative wins out.
Why buy Chrome anyway? Put that $34.5 billion into a team that forks and develops Chromium. Ban Google from developing browsers as well as paying for search preference in other browsers.