Perplexity wants to buy Chrome if Google has to sell it

Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko said he didn’t want to testify in a trial about how to resolve Google’s search monopoly because he feared retribution from Google. But after being subpoenaed to appear in court, he seized the moment to pitch a business opportunity for his AI company: buying Chrome.

If Judge Amit Mehta sees things the way the Justice Department does, he could force Google to spin out its popular web browser — including the free open source Chromium browser that many other web browsers are built on. Google says this remedy is playing with fire, and could result in a new Chromium owner charging for the product or failing to keep it running in an adequate way, causing ripple effects across the browser industry.

But Perplexity would be happy to take on the project, Shevelenko testified. When an attorney asked if Perplexity believes anyone besides Google could run a browser at the scale of Chrome without diminishing its quality or charging for it, Shevelenko responded, “I think we could do it.”

It’s not the first time the AI upstart has put its name in the ring to take over a major technology platform under siege by the US government. The less than three-year-old company also thinks it could buy TikTok, which is facing an ever-extending ban in the US over national security concerns based on its ownership by China-based ByteDance.

Although Shevelenko wasn’t a voluntary witness — he was called by the DOJ to demonstrate how Google’s search monopoly affects new generative AI companies — he seemed prepared to lay out his grievances against Google. He described the “jungle gym” of Android settings a user needs to navigate to set Perplexity as their default AI assistant, and admitted he even had to call on a colleague to help him do it (Shevelenko also admitted he’s a long-time iPhone user). Even once Perplexity’s assistant is set as the default over Google’s on an Android phone, he testified, it still doesn’t have the same standing as Google’s, since a user needs to press a button to activate it, rather than using a wake word like “Hey Google.”

During the DOJ’s questioning, Shevelenko walked through an anonymized list of phone makers that Perplexity has spoken with about a deal to make it a preloaded search engine or default assistant in the US, but failed to strike a bargain with. In talks with one company whose name was hidden from the public, Shevelenko said the discussion kept “hitting a wall because they were fearful of losing Google revenue share or Google agreements.” As it stands, Shevelenko testified, companies under contract with Google essentially have a “gun to [their] head” because Google can turn off significant revenue share if they do something Google dislikes.

Mehta found in the first phase of the case that Google used exclusionary agreements with phone and browser companies to lock up distribution channels, and many of those agreements prevent the companies from making certain kinds of deals that could displace Google’s status on their products.

Shevelenko said another unnamed company — which, based on public reporting appeared to be Motorola — agreed to preload Perplexity on its devices, but would not make it the default assistant “despite both parties wanting it to be.” He testified that Perplexity and the phone-maker “tried every creative workaround” to evade Google’s restrictions, but even though the company thought Perplexity’s assistant would be “great for their users,” they just couldn’t find a way to “get out of their Google obligations” and dislodge it as the default.

Shevelenko credited the judge’s monopoly ruling as the reason it could enter these talks at all. The fact that Google is “under pressure,” he said, is why wireless carriers, phone manufacturers, and browser makers are comfortable even discussing the possibility of a deal. But despite his opportunistic pitch, Shevelenko seemed ambivalent of Google being actually forced to sell Chrome. Ahead of his testimony, he shared a post from the Perplexity team on LinkedIn that argues Google should not “be broken up.” His company seems more concerned with ending Google’s search distribution agreements. And in court, Shevelenko warned it would be concerning to see a company like OpenAI buy Chrome (as one of its executives testified Tuesday it would be open to) and discontinue Chromium’s open source model or fail to adequately support the product. “There’s all the self-serving incentive to be here today and shout about how evil Google is, and I think we want to be reasonable,” he said. Google, he continued, builds good products that others are able to iterate on. “We wouldn’t want a remedy that cripples Google’s ability to keep doing that.”