Will Perplexity Buy Google Chrome?

0:00Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest here, and if you're looking for some serious fun, head over to ChumbotCasino.com. At Chumbot Casino, you can play all your favorite social casino-style games for free anytime, anywhere. It's the most fun you can have on your phone or computer. No purchase necessary. BGW group. Void work prohibited by law. See terms and conditions. 21+. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say, too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more.

0:33Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at rss.com. Today on the podcast, we are talking about perplexity and how they recently made an unsolicited offer to Google Chrome to buy them out$4.5 billion with a B. Crazy, crazy amount of money. I don't even know how serious that offer is, but today we're gonna get into all the details. I'll let you know what's up with that. But before we do, Jaden, why don't you tell them about our school community?

1:05Yeah, so every single week, Jamie and I record exclusive content that we post on our school community. There's over 300 members. And something that's amazing about the school community is basically just hearing from other people working on different projects and side hustles. We record and we post videos on there on a whole bunch of different topics. Jamie talks about how he made over$25 ,000 last year from an Amazon program. He talked about some ways that he was using AI to try scaling it up. I've talked a lot about becoming an AI consultant. I have a friend that charges$25 ,000 to go per talk, to go talk to companies about AI and leveraging it and adding it to their organization.

1:45So there's a ton of money there. I've talked a lot about using AI for growth marketing, scaling up my businesses. My company, which is AIbox.ai. It's a no-code AI app builder and marketplace that we're creating right now. And I've used AI on virtually everything I've done there. So, so much that we can't really share publicly. It's all in the school community. And we would love for you to go check it out. It's$20 a month or$19 a month. I think it's discounted right now. So, if you get locked in at that price, it won't be raised on you when we raise it in the future. But we'd love for you to go check it out.

2:16Let's get into what's going on with perplexity. So, this is pretty crazy. like Jamie mentioned, billions more than perplexity has ever raised. They actually offered$34.5 billion cash to buy Chrome. Now, why did they do this? Why are they giving unsolicited requests to go and purchase one of the biggest online assets of all time? The reason is because Google is in a little bit of legal trouble right now. Basically, a judge found them being anti-competitive with the way that they were running Chrome. I guess they were purposely, you know, suppressing other competitors or doing things that would put other competitors down.

2:56I will tell you my one personal qualm with Google that drives me absolutely nuts. But I mean, less relevant to the story. But in any case, this is basically what happened. So the thing that's important in the story is that the judge has not ruled that Google has to sell Chrome. Now, a lot of people are speculating that's the direction that it's going to go in. But the judge hasn't specifically said that has to happen. They just said they're anti-competitive and they're going to figure out what that means. And a lot of people are just suspecting that. And so because of that, the vultures are circling and everybody that would like a piece of Chrome is kind of making an offer.

3:27And perplexity is basically the first one with a public offer they put out. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I would love to know. So I found another article out here talking about how Google kind of was in a little bit of hot water for their flight search. Like it would only refer certain flights that they could maybe get like a referral commission on or something. So maybe that's what the antitrust law is about. I don't know if you know the details of that, but either way, I think, you know, Chrome is, is the browser I've used for years now. I feel like it's the best one. Perplexity has a lot of really game changing AI features and they have the user experience.

4:04I feel like to, to support a really, really cool, a really useful browser. And I feel like if they were able to partner with Google, it would kind of be like an amazing, amazing tool. So I don't know. Would you like to see those two combined forces or to be honest, I think it's mostly a publicity stunt. So I don't think it's going to happen mostly because Perplex is way too small of a company to take it on. But I think it would be amazing if it happened. Perplexity built Comet. So they were really one of the first ones with an AI browser that came out. They put out Comet and then opening eyes like, well, we're, you know, we're working on a browser, but like Perplexity beat them to it.

4:42Microsoft came out with a whole bunch of interesting AI features inside of Edge, which like I never used Microsoft Edge, formerly Internet Explorer. But like they actually have some cool features. The number one being that if you have like 20 tabs open of like a whole bunch of barbecues you're researching, you can ask it like based off of all my tabs, which one is like the most cost of fish that's also highest quality. It will look at all the content on all your tabs and then give you a response. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty useful. But Perplexity has a whole bunch of other cool features built into their comment browsers that they've come out with.

5:11So like Perplexity punches way above its weight, right? They're competing with Microsoft and Google right now to make a really cool browser. And I think they're doing a good job. They're the first ones out there with a good thing. And so they got a lot of splash for that. Basically, if they were to do this, I think they would do a fantastic job. They'd be able to do way cooler things with Chrome than Chrome's currently doing. That being said, it just, I think is way too much money. Basically perplexity. They've only raised, I think, like, I don't know if they, I think they might've raised like$1.5 billion to date.

5:40So they've raised 1.5 billion and they're offering 34 billion. It's just like, it's kind of laughable. The valuation is 18 billion. So it's like, they're almost like offering double what their companies were just on paper for, you know, this and they have to pay in cash. Now, one thing I will say, to be fair, is allegedly perplexed. He said they have found some investors that would be willing to back the deal. And I actually don't doubt that because if you are an investor, for example, and and you wanted to back someone going and taking over something like Chrome, I personally would try to put that investment through a company like perplexity that you know could really execute on it they've already built a browser they're already doing really innovative ai things i do think like that makes a lot of sense how much of the uh company would basically those investors eat up if they got if they you know put that much money in like i think they would get most the equity of uh of perplexity and because they're basically buying chrome with their own money and so it'd be interesting to see how that deal actually played out if it happened yeah something i've always wondered is because Chrome is such a well-known product, why couldn't Google have just integrated all their AI features in with Chrome somehow or like co-branded that?

6:47Like, I don't like that I have to have a separate Gemini app for all the Google AI stuff, you know? Like, I feel like those, in my mind at least, those two should be combined. But I don't know. Yeah, that's a good point. It's like Google doesn't really want to like muddy the water. They don't want to, if people are happily just using Chrome to do Google searches, is like they don't want to disrupt it because they're like, we'll make a lot of money from those searches and add revenue. So like, we'll make the Gemini completely separate. And, and I think that's kind of like the concept there is that they don't want to sabotage and annihilate their entire search business.

7:19It's a pretty good question, right? And so it literally, if it did happen, even though the Chrome thing is happening for like an antitrust reason, it would probably, yeah, make a lot of really exciting innovation, push the, push the entire company or the entire AI, you know, movement forward. Now, something that's interesting, though, is is kind of the number that perplexity offered, right? $34 billion. So I've said like, that's, you know, they don't have that money, blah, blah, blah. But that's actually a really discounted rate, even that number. And recently, one of Google's rivals, you know, is called DuckDuckGo.

7:51And it's another search engine. It's kind of like a privacy search engine. So it doesn't track anything. It was kind of set up to be like anti Google, like Google tracks everything DuckDuckGo doesn't. And so they were testifying on this whole case back in April and they were their CEO was like speculating. He's like, yeah, like Google Chrome is probably worth about like 50 billion dollars. And it kind of goes on to his testimony and stuff. And so I think with that like number thrown out there now, all of a sudden, perplexity offers 34 billion. It's like if they got it for that price, it would definitely be a pretty massive discount.

8:20All right. I got to give you my qualm about Google. I have no idea if this is included in their antitrust thing, but it drives me crazy. I click on links from, so my main browser is called Brave. It's basically a Chromium browser, which means that like Google Chrome released like an open source model. So people are open source code that people can basically put like clone Chrome and make their own browsers, which is really cool because all of the extensions that people build for Google Chrome work on all those other browsers. So I use one called Brave and it basically just blocks ads. It's just basically a browser that blocks every ad out of existence.

8:54I do not even remember that ads exist on the internet. I have not seen one in like years. And so, yeah, basically that's all it does. And so what was interesting is on my phone, I have that app. And every time I click a link from like a message on Facebook Messenger or on like text message, it will go and open up on my default browser, which is Brave. Then on Brave, I have Google set as my default search engine. And when I search for something on that Google search engine, like it acts like it's a bug because it only happens like 10 % of the time. it will actually open up the google app on my phone and like search for it over there i'm like like what the heck so i gotta like close that go back to brave search it again and then it opens up like normal and they're like oops just a bug you know one in ten times we open up our own app anyways it's just so shady google that is very shady i know that's not a freaking bug you just that's kind of get me on your app anyways so um i think there's some probably shadier things that they're actually getting in trouble for but kind of funny that's my personal gripe well i will say perplexity does a pretty good job in their, their marketing.

9:54I feel like they, they hop in and kind of get these outlandish things going or, or at least like newsworthy things. Like I remember they covered the election really well, uh, the super bowl. I feel like they do, they do a pretty good job. And so, yeah, this, like you said, it might be a publicity stunt either way. I feel like for being kind of one of the smaller players, you know, up stacked up against Google, open AI, you know, all that kind of stuff there, they're doing pretty well. And I, I do hope that they, they are around for a long time because they really do like their products. 100 % totally agree.

10:26Google Chrome is 68 % of the entire browser market. So this is a massive asset. It'll be very interesting to see if they could get their hands on it. And I will also say it's worth mentioning for perplexity, they're currently in the process of trying to merge with TikTok or at least put a bid in to do that because Trump and Biden over the last eight years have both said that TikTok needs to be divested and be purchased or merged with an American company, yada yada, because all the Chinese like spyware in it and stuff. So anyways, pretty interesting to see that Perplexes trying to take on TikTok, trying to get Google Chrome, trying to get their hands on any big assets they can, which is hilarious to me.

11:02So more power to them. Hey, if you enjoyed the episode today, thanks so much for tuning in. We really appreciate it. If you could leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcast, they basically help this show get shown to a whole bunch of new people and growing the algorithm so more amazing people like yourself can find it. Also, make sure to go check out our school community. There's a link in the description. We can go check that out. We'd love to have you as a member and help you grow and scale your business. All right, we'll catch you in the next one. Hey, it is Ryan Seacrest here.

11:29Want to bring a little Hollywood excitement to your day? Take a few spins with Chamba Casino's brand new game, Ryan Seacrest's 10K Ways. It's free and features 10 ,000 ways to play, giving you nonstop action, including thrilling bonus respins and cascading reels. Every spin brings something new. So step into the spotlight. Enjoy the excitement and play today at ChumbaCasino.com.

12:17and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at rss.com.