Perplexity makes unexpected $34.5 billion offer to buy Google Chrome
Perplexity has submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid to acquire Google Chrome, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The offer is nearly double Perplexity’s valuation of about $18 billion, and multiple large investment funds have agreed to fully finance the acquisition, as confirmed by Perplexity’s chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko speaking to Bloomberg.
A spokesperson for Perplexity stated that, should the deal succeed, the company intends to invest over $3 billion into Chrome and Chromium development over the next two years. This roadmap was shared with Bloomberg in tandem with news of the acquisition attempt. The move follows previous public statements from Perplexity, which had indicated it would seek to purchase Chrome only if government action required Google to sell the browser.
Google has given no indication it would sell Chrome, and there is no legal requirement for such a sale. Earlier this year, Perplexity also submitted a bid to acquire TikTok.
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External links
- Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for ChromeThe Wall Street Journal
- AI Startup Perplexity Makes $34.5 Billion Bid for Google’s Chrome BrowserBloomberg
- AI startup Perplexity makes bold $34.5 billion bid for Google's Chrome browserReuters
- Perplexity offers to buy Google's Chrome browser for $34.5 billionCNBC
- Perplexity offers to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billionThe Verge
Comments
Buying Google Chrome doesn't make sense. You could contact the Google Chrome developers, but most of Chrome is open source with Chromium.
Google is not going to sell one of its biggest products, even though it's free to use. They control a large part of the web due to Chrome.
I think Google is more inclined to fully open-source Google Chrome than be forced to sell it via a lawsuit.
$34B, for the largest browser with over two thirds of the market share, one of the most valuable product of a $2T company, that will never sell it if not forced to, and wouldn't for less than $200B? Sorry Perpelex-whatever but you'll need to raise fund few more times and being valuated as much as OpenAI (that then would be valuated as much as Google) for your offer to be taken seriously.
Quite true