Search.com has entered the flee to intention Google Chrome, topping Perplexity AI’s $34.5 billion negate with a $35 billion counteroffer backed by JPMorgan Race and a consortium of deepest equity firms.
The $500 million pass intensifies a excessive-stakes fight over the style ahead for web taking a survey and AI search, as extra challengers space themselves to lift alter of the sector’s most-venerable browser.
“We sight this as each and every offense and defense,” Melissa Anderson, president of Public Real, which owns Search.com, informed Decrypt. “Acquiring Chrome affords us the scale to flee adoption of our AI search platform—and a say connection to customers.”
The U.S. Division of Justice sued Google in 2020, alleging it illegally dominates search and marketing. In April, a federal court docket dominated Google had monopolized the digital ad market. Chrome accounts for roughly 65% of international browser exercise, but a March 2025 Wharton characterize estimated Google’s alter of search web teach visitors at almost 90%.
On Tuesday, Perplexity AI submitted its $34.5 billion proposal, positioning the deal as a mode to withhold an starting up-offer web and counter Huge Tech’s grip on browser infrastructure. Unnamed institutional traders serve that offer.
Every Search.com and Perplexity are framing their bids as cures to that dominance. For Search.com, nonetheless, the acquisition is about extra than infrastructure—it’s about rep entry to.
“Google and Bing alter the lion’s fragment of search,” Danny Bibi, CEO of Public Real’s guardian company Ad.com, added. “For us to catapult development and offer appropriate incremental web teach visitors, Chrome is the rep entry to point. That’s the gateway.”
Search.com is a division of Public Real, itself owned by ad.com, a digital ad network founded in 1993. The corporate estimates it brings in $300 million to $400 million each and every yr by marketing, and believes owning Chrome may perchance perchance push that into the billions.
Search.com’s negate fits the improvement of Perplexity’s offer—including Chrome’s codebase, trademarks, infrastructure, and particular person info—but provides particular person-focused perks: ad-free taking a survey, cashback for searches, and a 60% earnings-fragment model for publishers.
“It’s piece of our commitment to moral AI—we’re now not scraping teach with out compensation,” Anderson acknowledged. “We desire to support journalism, and we provide a 60% ad earnings fragment to the publishers who contribute teach.”
AI Hands Speed Comes to the Browser
The bids land as AI aspects develop into key aspects within the browser market. Microsoft has added Copilot Mode to Edge. Courageous consists of the Leo assistant. Opera runs on Google’s Gemini and is making an try out a next-gen browser called Neon. An OpenAI-built browser is rumored to be in vogue.
Search.com, which unveiled a generative AI platform earlier this month, says Chrome would wait on because the backbone for what it calls “a platform built for public ardour, now not appropriate profit.”
“All people must peaceable have free, equitable rep entry to to info,” Anderson acknowledged. “We desire to negate that whereas holding publishers paid and customers on high of things.”
Google has now not publicly responded to both proposal. In accordance with Anderson and Abibi, the corporate has bought Search.com’s offer.
With two competing bids on the table, the style ahead for Chrome—and the characteristic of AI within the browser residing—is now firmly in play.
“We’ve establish a stake within the bottom,” Abibi acknowledged. “It’s now up to them.”
Perplexity did now not acknowledge to Decrypt’s search info from for comment.
