From PC World: As a federal antitrust investigation into Google’s Chrome browser wraps up, rivals are striking: Perplexity has launched an unsolicited bid to buy Chrome for a whopping $34.5 billion, according to reports.
Bloomberg reported the proposed deal, confirmed by a Perplexity representative, as did The Wall Street Journal.
But there’s a hitch: Perplexity doesn’t have $34.5 billion to fund the deal with. In fact, the WSJ estimates its own valuation at just $18 billion. This means Perplexity would have to come up with another source of cash, and it appears that it has done just that. Perplexity chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko told Bloomberg that “multiple large investment firms have agreed to finance the deal.”
Google Chrome is built upon Chromium, the open-source foundation that powers virtually all of Chrome’s rival browsers, including Microsoft Edge, its closest rival on Windows. In the United States, Chrome holds 51.05 percent of all user sessions, Statcounter reports. According to the WSJ, Perplexity agreed to maintain Chromium and keep Google as the default search engine within Chrome, at least for now.
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