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On the second day of Google’s landmark antitrust search trial, AI startup Perplexity told the court it would consider buying Chrome—but would rather Google retain the open-source browser over seeing it fall into the hands of a company like OpenAI. Although it’s unclear how Perplexity would be able to afford the browser.
When asked whether Perplexity believes any company other than Google could run Chrome at scale—without sacrificing quality or charging people, Perplexity’s chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko said “I think we could do it.”
Shevelenko raised red flags about the future of Chromium, Google’s open-source browser base, if OpenAI were to snap up Chrome in a court-ordered divestiture, (OpenAI exec Nick Turnely, who testified earlier in the week, said the company would be interested in Chrome in the event of a spin off).
In the event of a forced sell off, Perplexity is working on its own workaround. The company plans to launch Comet, a Chromium-based browser it’s building in-house.
Shevelenko said that Google makes strong products that others can iterate on, and Perplexity doesn’t want a remedy that “cripples Google’s ability to keep doing that.” However, he also didn’t hold back on sharing his complaints of the tech giant having exclusive agreements with mobile carriers.
“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,” Shevelenko said, per The Verge.
This isn’t the first time Perplexity has thrown its hat in the ring for a big tech castoff. The AI startup has also floated the idea of buying TikTok, the social giant currently staring down a potential U.S. ban over its ties to China-based ByteDance.
Perplexity isn’t just worrying about Chrome. Shevelenko testified that Google’s ironclad distribution deals with phone makers and carriers have boxed his company out of similar partnerships. Meanwhile, The Justice Department is urging the court to unwind those deals as part of its remedies to break up Google’s illegal search monopoly.
Shevelenko—who had initially hesitated to testify due to concerns about potential repercussions from Google—didn’t shy away from detailing his complaints. He walked the court through the cumbersome process of setting Perplexity as the default AI assistant on Android, admitting he even needed help from a colleague. He added that even after completing the process, Perplexity’s assistant still doesn’t operate on equal footing with Google’s—requiring people to manually activate it, per The Verge.
Shevelenko also said that Perplexity had engaged with a list of anonymized phone makers in an attempt to strike a deal to have its AI search preloaded as the default in the U.S. However, he said, the company was unable to reach any agreements. The phone makers, he explained, were wary of jeopardizing their share of Google’s revenue by breaking existing deals.
