The U.S. Justice Department is pressuring Google to divest Chrome as part of its remedies to address Google’s monopolistic position in the Search market.
The bid to own Google’s Chrome browser might turn into a three-way contest.
In an investor note following a Wall Street Journal report that Perplexity extended an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer to buy Chrome, RBC Capital Markets stated that OpenAI could comfortably place a higher bid should Google put the browser up for sale.
Chrome is critical to ramping distribution for horizontal GenAI applications, and thus, OpenAI would potentially be prepared to pay significantly more for it in an auction scenario, the research firm said.
The developments come as the U.S. Justice Department is pressuring Google to divest Chrome as one of the remedies to address its monopolistic position in the Internet search market, as deemed by a U.S. district court in August last year.
RBC said the judge is expected to rule on the remedies for Google this month. If a forced auction is ordered, multiple potential buyers, including OpenAI, are likely to step forward.
On Tuesday, the WSJ broke the news of Perplexity’s bid for Chrome, adding that the AI firm has commitments from venture capital investors. The reported deal price is nearly twice Perplexity’s last reported valuation.
Brad Shimmin, from research firm Futurum Group, called it a “dramatic shift in the AI infrastructure landscape,” drawing parallels to the 1995 showdown between Firefox and Microsoft (MSFT) for the web browser on desktops.
“We’re seeing the same thing play out today with Google, Perplexity, and frontier (AI) model makers like OpenAI vying for control over the AI experience on the web.”
Patrick Moorhead, CEO of technology advisory firm Moor Insights & Strategy, believes the WSJ report was a “great PR stunt” by Perplexity. “If nothing else, it shows the importance of browser-based AI,” he said in an X post.
To be sure, OpenAI is better positioned than Perplexity to make significant purchases. The Microsoft-backed company is clocking close to $1 billion a month in revenue, thanks to approximately 700 million monthly active users for its ChatGPT app, and recently closed a record $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank.
On the product side, it is gaining traction after the recent rollout of its latest GPT-5 model and a partnership to power AI features on Apple devices.
However, analysts broadly note that Google is unlikely to part with Chrome, which has a nearly 70% market share, given its central role in promoting the company’s AI features. Google is rapidly integrating more AI functionality into Search, with AI Overviews being the most notable recent rollout.
According to an exclusive report in Reuters last month, OpenAI is expected to introduce its own web browser.
Perplexity recently unveiled its Comet browser, which integrates the company’s AI search tools and assistant. This browser will initially be available only to subscribers of the $200-per-month Perplexity Max plan, with a broader rollout planned via invite.
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