The threat of Artificial intelligence has become more real for Google now. A huge drop in google search traffic on safari web browser can be seen visibly.
A free-AI startup company takes advantage of uncertainty over pending antitrust ruling and offered to purchase Google chrome browser intimidating new concerns.
According to the WSJ, American private software company, Perplexity on Tuesday, August 12, 2025, took a bold initiative and offered to purchase Google chrome browser for $34 billion at work to challenge the tech giant web searching dominance.
Perplexity made this longshot offer for chrome with its unsolicited bid for Google’s browser.
Apple’s senior president Mr. Eddy Cue disclosed that for the first time in 20 years, searches on google safari actually went down during the last couple of months.
Google and Apple have this partnership that when you open search bar in Safari web browser on your iPhone, it directly links to Google search.
Moreover, Google pays a huge amount to Apple every year for this joint partnership, even then searches have gone down because more of the apple customers are using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity etc.
Browsing traffic at google has seen a major decline. For a while google has been facing this threat that generative AI may replace google search.
This risk can be seen as the hard data point threat that the user behavior might be shifting to other search engines which directly hits the stocks of Apple’s parent company ‘Alphabet’, reports Mr. Eddy.
CEO Perplexity Aravind Srinivas, confirmed that the company has sent the formal bid offer to Google despite being valued at $18 billion itself.
Spokesperson Perplexity confirmed that this acquisition bid is the San Francisco-based startup’s effort to become a forerunner in web browsers.
Perplexity’s representative said, “For us this is an important commitment to the open web, user choice, and continuity for everyone who has chosen Chrome. The formal offer letter to Google contains several important elements.”
For now, the commitment entails to continue ongoing and substantial investment in Chromium worth $3 billion over the next two years, following the acquisition.
Furthermore, Perplexity has also promised to never change user defaults without giving users the choice, to never "stealthily replace" Google as the default search engine of Chrome.
Additionally, the American software company will extend offers to a substantial portion of Chrome talent. Perplexity has also committed to "100 months of availability and support for Chrome users."
As reported by Fortune, the active interest of AI startups and offers in google holds a significant importance related to the google monopoly.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, google has an illegal monopoly in google search, therefore they had proposed google to sell the chrome browser and license its search data to competitors.
