Ars TechnicaPerplexity offers more than twice its total valuation to buy Chrome from Google
Google may soon be ordered to sell Chrome, and Perplexity is ready.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/perplexity-offers-more-than-twice-its-total-valuation-to-buy-chrome-from-google/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Adam Katz@arstechnica@mastodon.social There is only one feasible new home for Chromium: an independent non-profit funded by an endowment populated by fines applied to Alphabet/Google.
It doesn't make money (it mustn't make money!)
It is very expensive to develop (this is why it's faster than Firefox!)
Selling it to a not-yet-profitable owner is a really bad idea—they'll try to monetize it
demi7en 🎗
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@arstechnica@mastodon.social Who are (behind) "Perplexity" and why are they in this business?
(Isn't Chrome mostly open-source anyway; see: Chromium)
Ducky Fella@arstechnica@mastodon.social Everything about this is truly awful. Like on the one hand, screw Google. On the other hand, this would leave us techies spending the next 10 years having to tell friends and family that no, Chrome is no longer something you should download.
@demi7en@infosec.exchange @arstechnica@mastodon.social they are typical ai bubble company, trying to shoehorn ai everywhere. Their main public product is a search engine with voice assistant. So trying to be Google, but without generating revenue yet
demi7en 🎗🇪🇺@munkisquisher@mastodon.nz @arstechnica@mastodon.social Well, yeah, I was wondering about the who they are.
The techbro/VC posse tend to have interesting priorities these days.