Perplexity doesn’t just want to compete with Google, it apparently wants to be Google.
CEO Aravind Srinivas said this week on the TBPN podcast that one reason Perplexity is building its own browser is to collect data on everything users do outside of its own app. This so it can sell premium ads.
“That’s kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you,” Srinivas said. “Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It’s not like that’s personal.”
And work-related queries won’t help the AI company build an accurate-enough dossier.
“On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you,” he explained.
Srinivas believes that Perplexity’s browser users will be fine with such tracking because the ads should be more relevant to them.
“We plan to use all the context to build a better user profile and, maybe you know, through our discover feed we could show some ads there,” he said.
The browser, named Comet, suffered setbacks but is on track to be launched in May, Srinivas said.
He’s not wrong, of course. Quietly following users around the internet helped Google become the roughly $2 trillion market cap company it is today.
That’s why it built a browser and a mobile operating system. Indeed, Perplexity is attempting something in the mobile world, too. It’s signed a partnership with Motorola, announced Thursday, where its app will be pre-installed on the Razr series and can be accessed though the Moto AI by typing “Ask Perplexity.”
Perplexity is also in talks with Samsung, Bloomberg reported. Srinivas didn’t flat-out confirm that, though he did reference on the podcast the Bloomberg article, published earlier this month, that discussed both partnerships.
Obviously, Google isn’t the only one watching users online to sell ads. Meta’s ad tracking technology, Pixels, which is embedded on websites across the internet, is how Meta gathers data, even on people that don’t have Facebook or Instagram accounts. Even Apple, which has marketed itself as a privacy protector, can’t resist tracking users’ locations to sell advertising in some of its apps by default.
On the other hand, this kind of thing has led people across the political spectrum in the U.S. and in Europe to distrust big tech.
The irony of Srinivas openly explaining his browser-tracking ad-selling ambitions this week also can’t be overstated.
Google is currently in court fighting the U.S. Department of Justice, which has alleged Google behaved in monopolistic ways to dominate search and online advertising. The DOJ wants the judge to order Google to divest Chrome.
Both OpenAI and Perplexity — not surprisingly, given Srinivas’ reasons — said they would buy the Chrome browser business if Google was forced to sell.