Sou Hu Cai Jing·2025-08-14 00:03Group 1 - Perplexity, an AI startup, has made a bold acquisition proposal to Google’s parent company Alphabet, offering $34.5 billion in cash to acquire the Chrome browser, nearly double its own valuation of $18 billion [1][3] - The company promises to maintain the core functionalities of Chrome and invest $3 billion in the open-source Chromium project over the next 24 months, while keeping Google as the default search engine to alleviate regulatory concerns [3][4] - Perplexity processes approximately 30 million queries daily, with an expected total of around 780 million queries by May 2025, indicating significant growth potential in the AI-driven search market [3] Group 2 - Chrome holds a dominant position in the global browser market with a market share of 67.94% and over 3.5 billion users, which is crucial for Google’s search and advertising business [4] - A U.S. District Court ruled in August 2024 that Google has a monopoly in the search market, leading to recommendations for Google to divest the Chrome browser to reduce its market dominance [4] - Other potential buyers for Chrome include OpenAI and Yahoo, indicating a competitive landscape for the acquisition, although Perplexity's chances of success may be limited due to Chrome's significance to Google and the presence of strong competitors [5]