This is Getting Ridiculous
This was my reaction to the rumored Google–Perplexity deal, in which AI company Perplexity offered to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion at the same time the DOJ is trying to force Google to sell Chrome. This is a bad deal for multiple reasons. First of all, the DOJ should not be forcing Google to sell Chrome. Chrome does not have a monopoly over the browser market. The browser that comes preinstalled on 80% of desktops worldwide is Microsoft Edge — and it still gets ignored. Microsoft literally has to beg users to stick with Edge. Every time someone types “Google” or “Chrome” into Edge, it throws up ads telling you to use Bing, Copilot, and Edge… and people still click away. The free market has decided, overwhelmingly, that they want Chrome. The DOJ should not punish companies for being successful. Perplexity, of course, wants Chrome for the user base — despite having just released its own Chromium-based AI browser, Comet. And while Perplexity’s offer massively undervalues Chr...