Alphabet has locked horns with the Justice Department over its dominance in the U.S. search market, with the U.S. Department of Justice courts angling to break the company up to end its monopoly.
The stakes are high, given that Google is the largest search engine and Google Chrome is the largest browser, providing Alphabet unparalleled control over how Americans interact with the internet.
While Alphabet is appealing a ruling to spin off its Chrome browser, rivals are drooling over the potential to acquire the search engine.
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And it's not just established big tech that's eyeballing it.
Perplexity, the second-largest AI chatbot by market share, has made an unexpected, unsolicited, and surprising $34.5 billion bid to buy Chrome this week.
Alphabet will unlikely agree to sell Chrome to Perplexity, founded by Aravind Srinivas, a former Google DeepMind intern and OpenAI employee.
However, the bold move could still upend reports that Apple has been considering acquiring Perplexity to accelerate its AI program.
Apple has a Google problem (and an AI problem)
The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 kick-started a tsunami of research and development of AI chatbots. These large language models can quickly parse massive amounts of data to create more useful answers to user searches.
ChatGPT is the Goliath, with a market share of nearly 80%, but Perplexity, also developed in 2022, is the second-largest player with a 10% market share.
Other high-profile AI chatbots include Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, Microsoft's Copilot, Meta Platform's Llama, and DeepSeek — a Chinese chatbot that created a stir earlier this year because it was reportedly developed for just $6 million.
Absent from the list? Apple.
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Apple has a long history of secretive development, taking its time to reinvent more user-friendly consumer electronics.
Founder Steve Jobs was famous for his “one more thing” reveals at Apple conferences, and under current CEO Tim Cook, Apple has taken a measured approach to new products, preferring tweaks rather than major, revolutionary changes.
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, this has led to a lot of criticism over Apple's progress on AI.
Many believe Apple Intelligence is lagging severely behind rivals, leaving the company open to missing out on what could be the biggest technology trend since the dawn of the internet.
Apple's Cook insists there's an AI plan in motion, but it's not only Apple fans who hope that's true.
Investors are also eagerly awaiting a major splash, given that AI could help blunt the potential loss of $20 billion in revenue from Google, which pays Apple to be the default search engine behind its Safari browser.
The DOJ says Apple's deal with Google is anticompetitive and a “pay-to-play” agreement that effectively locks out rivals, making it a cornerstone of its argument against Google's monopoly.
Perplexity's bid to buy Chrome may squash Apple's M&A interest
Rumors have swirled that Apple may accelerate its AI roadmap by acquiring Perplexity.
Doing so would solve a few big challenges for Apple, providing it with immediate AI scale and a proven monetization strategy, given Perplexity's size and freemium model. It would also give it an answer engine that could mitigate some risks of losing Google as its search engine.
The sheer size of Perplexity's offer may be enough to force Apple away from the table. Perplexity is reportedly valued at $18 billion, a manageable number for Apple given its size, borrowing power, and over $200 billion in short and long-term cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities.
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Still, Apple's track record is smaller bolt-on deals, rather than huge splashes. Its largest acquisition was Beats, which cost it only $3 billion.
Clearly, it has historically believed its engineers can build better mousetraps than rivals. Yet Tim Cook did leave the door open to larger deals in July.
“We've acquired around seven companies this year,” said Cook on Apple's quarterly earnings conference call. “We're very open to M&A that accelerates our road map… We are not stuck on a certain size company.”
Nevertheless, Perplexity's $34.5 billion bid for Chrome, which it claims has venture capital backing, suggests that buying it outright may cost (a lot) more than $18 billion.
If the deal goes through, however unlikely that may be, it would likely throw up an anticompetitive regulatory hurdle too large to overcome, given that combined, Safari and Chrome would represent browser market share north of 80%.
Either way, Perplexity's unexpected bid for Chrome could mean any deal with Apple is on the back burner, if not off the stove entirely.
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