The unsolicited offer is higher than Perplexity’s valuation.
AI startup Perplexity has offered Google $34.5 billion to buy the Chrome browser. The price might be below evaluation, but the company may be forced to sell the browser at the request of U.S. authorities as part of a case in which it was found guilty of being a monopoly.
https://x.com/80Level/status/1955488788861555082
Might as well be wanting all that juicy personal information from which to mine not only for profit but also for sending a SWAT team through the door without a court order and a search warrant. Or, sending a Hellfire missile through a window of a house somewhere in Pakistan.
lol this number makes no sense. Minecraft was worth 4 billion a decade ago. Chrome is worth way more than 34
they know they can fork it and compile their own build for free right?
It would buying the name and user base and they already have a fork called Comet
I was being facetious
my bad, kinda hard to get it through a text comment.
Well this is somehow much, much worse than Google
For those who missed it, perplexity is the one happily powering truth social’s AI search with their logo front and centre
Remember your browser choices aren’t that of everyone you know. Many of them will happily continue with Chrome and may end up looking at a profile of yours or something—just not using it is really not gonna cut it
Oh that’s awful. I’m non-U.S. and didn’t know.
Hmm I wonder how they intend to get 34 billion back from their investment?
Pumping that bubble some more.
It’s bizarre to see how many people and companies don’t see a bubble, it seems so clear to me that yeah, machine learning will continue, but this current iteration isn’t something that people respond well to
C levels want to ride the bubble and have their golden parachutes ready for when it pops. Then they can use their ‘experience’ as an excuse to have their connections prop them up again to ride the next bubble!
These AI companies know damned well it’s a bubble, they’re not stupid, they just can’t risk missing out on being the next Microsoft or Google or FaceBook. It’s the highest stakes gamble I’ve ever seen and there’s so much money tied up that it will crash the US economy when it pops.
Isn’t something that you don’t respond to, sure. And here in social media you’re surrounded by like-minded people. But perhaps AI is more popular with the general public than you think?
I love that the Lemmy crowd thinks people don’t like LLMs.
Getting back? What is this, the purchase of a textile factory in 1900? All we trade these days is hype. I’ve transformed my mind into a fabulous factory for hype. I share my late-night infomercials with hollow dreams and empty glitz. Every morning, I wake up to a profit projection I crafted ages ago that concludes only one thing: I’m eternally destined to chase empty promises. My dazzling ambitions, my relentless optimism, my stubborn refusal to balk at the absurd—these have launched me on a glorious carousel where logic never intervenes.
I imagined changing the world without thinking about the real cost, and by the time I noticed, I had run out of backup plans. What am I offering? I’m stuck using the same old tricks to make empty promises seem exciting. I give up my integrity to sell dreams for someone else’s imaginary future. I work tirelessly for a bright tomorrow that I know we’ll never get to see. The drive that started all this will never get applause or a spotlight. So what do I give up? Everything!
spoiler
Capitalist spin on Luthen’s monologue
Wouldn’t people just leave? I feel like that’s such an easy thing to do these days. If they are too old, they probably weren’t using Chrome anyway and default to edge since its just there. I know not everyone would, but I wonder what the percentage would be in the end. They have been killing it themselves lately with the removal of the blockers. I’ve been on Firefox for over a decade now. If Firefox did something like this, I would be gone in a day.
Never underestimate people’s stubbornness to stick with enshittified platforms.
The vast majority of people will keep using whatever they are already used to unless there’s egregious changes that impact their workflows. Even then they might not move.
with what money
Everyone else’s but theirs.
Good play to suck up data. I wonder if OpenAI, Palantir and others will bid too. Might be brilliant for Nvidia.
Palantir buying Chrome would be so cyberpunk it hurts.
How… perplexing!
