Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 08/13 – Perplexity Wants To Acquire Chrome

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Perplexity offers to acquire Chrome, but how serious are they? Fine, says OpenAI, have your GPT-4o back. Are AI companions the next breakout AI business beyond coding help? And is GM getting back in the self-driving car business for real this time? Links: Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome (WSJ) OpenAI brings GPT-4o back as a default for all paying ChatGPT users, Altman promises ‘plenty of notice’ if it leaves again (VentureBeat) OpenAI rolls out Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts integration in ChatGPT (BleepingComputer) UK porn site traffic plunges as age verification rules take effect (Financial Times) AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025 (TechCrunch) GM Plans Renewed Driverless-Car Push After Cruise Debacle (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. slash college PC. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Wednesday, August 13th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Perplexity offers to acquire Chrome, but how serious are they? Fine, says OpenAI, have your GPD-40 back. Our AI companions, the next breakout AI business beyond coding help, and is GM getting back in the self-driving car business for real this time?

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Well, this is designed to get your attention. AI startup perplexity has offered to acquire Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion. Now, that is obviously significantly more than Perplexity's estimated $18 billion valuation, but that's okay, Perplexity says, because VC funds have agreed to back the deal. Quoting the journal, estimates of Chrome's enterprise value vary widely, but recent ones have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion. $1. U.S. District Judge Amit Meta is weighing whether to force Google to sell the browser as a means of weakening Google's stranglehold on web search. Meta last year ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market and is expected to rule this month on how to restore competition.

The perplexity offer could be an attempt to signal to the judge that there is an interested buyer should he force a sale. In a letter to Sundar Pachai, chief executive of Google Parent Alphabet, perplexity said its offer to buy Chrome is, quote, designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable independent operator. Founded in 2022, San Francisco-based perplexity recently released its own web browser called Comet to some of its users. Analysts say the judge is unlikely to force the company to sell Chrome, though he gave little indication of which way he was leaning. During closing arguments earlier this year, he asked whether doing so would be, quote, a little cleaner and a little bit more elegant than other remedies aimed at improving search competition.

End quote. Now, our friend M.G. Siegler says what occurred to me when I heard this, which is essentially that this is clearly a marketing stunt and strategic signaling amid Google's antitrust uncertainty. Quote, I'll give perplexity one thing. Making the offer $34.5 billion is a nice touch. It makes it seem precise. Like a business person put a lot of $3.5 billion.

thought into this transparently silly marketing stunt. A non-serious offer would be, say, $30 billion, but $34.5. There's clearly math there somewhere. I mean, if a VC fund were offered the chance to invest in a piece of software with 3.5 billion active users, they would do it every day of the week. Even if it takes $34.5 billion, well, we're narrowing down the funds that could help with such a buyout. But sure, why not? It would have the potential to transform perplexity from a second-tier AI startup into the first tier immediately. And that first tier is currently worth $300 billion, soon, perhaps $500 billion, maybe $200 billion, and $170 billion with OpenAI, XAI, and Anthropic, respectively.

Perplexity's $18 billion valuation, plus this new Chrome add-on would zoom right past $50 billion. Wait, I'm taking this all way too seriously now. Again, this is clearly a marketing stunt, as it was the first time Perplexity floated it. and just as it was when they floated buying TikTok too. Perplexity loves this, and the press eats it up. And now I'm eating up the leftovers because guess what? Google is not selling Chrome. So this is like a straw man at an auction.

Yes, the judge in the antitrust case against Google is set to rule soon on the Chrome remedy, but it still feels unlikely he will make Google do something with Chrome because it just doesn't make a ton of sense, though Google is trying like hell to make it more sense for the judge by shoving Gemini into Chrome. I actually think Chrome is worth far more than that, at least to Google, but it's possible that it's also worth far less than that to anyone else, because a huge part of the value of Chrome to Google is not needing to pay another company for default placement in their browsers, you know, like the $20 billion plus a year Google pays to Apple right now, which also may be going

away with the antitrust changes. Imagine a world where Chrome doesn't exist, or more to the point where Google doesn't own Chrome, they're going to be paying tens of billions more to others. How much is that worth to Google? A lot. More than even $34.5 billion. That said, the value to others is likely in that massive user base. And if you remove Google from Chrome, it's hard to know where those users go. Do they stay? A lot of them surely would if Chrome owned by someone else was allowed to simply update the browsers already installed billions of times around the world. But if they had to redownload this newfangled Chrome, the situation gets more complicated fast. Look, I'm trying to be reasonable here.

Perplexity's move is clearly a farcical publicity stunt, which they'd never admit, obviously. And I respect the hustle to continually get outlets like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Bloomberg to write about your company. And it has the added benefit of adding pressure to the antitrust case, trying to showcase to the judge that others would be willing to buy Chrome from Google. All that said, perplexity does this type of stuff a lot. Too much, in my opinion. They should focus on building great products and a great sustainable business.

The first product was good. I'm less sold on the other attempts, including, by the way, their first take on a web browser in Comet, which I got access to last week and am generally underwhelmed by, certainly versus DIA, although I will say it's a lot like Chrome, a sort of uglier Chrome. I've long thought it made some sense for Apple to buy perplexity, given not just the AI chops, but the search element as well, but I've always been hesitant about the cultural fit, and this kind of stuff just adds to that problem. Apple would have to be pretty desperate to buy up a team that constantly pulls such stunts, end quote. Bit of an AI omnibus segment for you now.

First up, OpenAI has gone ahead and restored GPT4-0 as one of the default options for all paid chat GPT users. Quoting Venture Beat. Paying chat GPT subscribers will also get a new show additional models setting on by default that restores access to GPT4-1, 03, and 04 mini. the latter two reasoning-focused LLMs. When OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman announced the change on X, he pledged that if the company ever removes GPT40 in the future, it will give, quote, plenty of notice.

The models can be found in the picker menu at the top of the chat GPT session screen on the web and on mobile and other apps, end quote. But OpenAI also added connectors for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google contacts in chat GPT for pro users with Plus, Team Enterprise, and Edu plans to follow. Quoting bleeping computer. For those unaware, connectors allow you to connect third-party services to chat GPT. Once a service has been connected, chat GPT can reference it in the chat.

For example, OpenAI recently added Dropbox support to GPT connectors. If you have dozens of files in your Dropbox, you can give chat GPT access to the account and let it reference them in a future question or deep research. Similarly, ChatGPT can now reference Google services when relevant. The idea is to make it faster and easier to bring information from these tools into your conversations without having to manually select them each time. Pro users globally get this this week, followed by Plus Team Enterprise and Edu plans in the coming weeks. OpenAI noted, you can turn on Google connectors or other connectors from settings,

then connectors, then connect on the application, end quote. And finally, Anthropic has updated Claude Sonnet 4 to support a 1 million token context window, letting it process prompts up to 750,000 words or 75,000 lines of code, up to 5x on its old limits, and more than double the 400,000 token context window GPT5 will give you. Quoting TechCrunch. Anthroping has built one of the largest enterprise businesses among AI model developers, largely by selling Claude to AI coding platforms such as Microsoft's GitHub co-pilot, Winsurf, and AnySphere's cursor.

While Claude has become the model of choice among developers, GPT5 may threaten. threaten Anthropics' dominance with its competitive pricing and strong coding performance. AnySphere CEO Michael Truel even helped OpenAI announce the launch of GPD5, which is now the default AI model for new users in Cursor. Anthropics product lead for the Claude platform, Brad Abrams told TechCrunch in an interview that he expects AI coding platforms to get, quote, a lot of benefit from this update. When asked if GPT5 put a dent in Claude's API usage, Abrams downplayed the concern saying he's really happy with the API business and the way. It's been growing. Whereas OpenAI generates most of its revenue from consumer subscriptions to

chat GPT, Anthropics business centers around selling AI models to enterprises through an API. That's made AI coding platforms a key customer for Anthropic and could be why the company is throwing in some new perks to attract users in the face of GPT5, end quote. That global age verification on the internet craze that is sweeping the world, does it actually do anything? Well, according to similar web, yes, it can have an impact. Apparently, UK traffic fell 47% for Pornhub, 47% for X videos, and 39% for X Hamster after age verification rules took effect. Quoting the FT, media regulator Offcom on July 25th began enforcing the new requirements for

adult sites to check the age of all UK users under the Online Safety Act, one of the world's toughest new regimes aimed at protecting children on the internet. Users have, among other options, been asked to upload identity documents, enter credit card details or scan their faces with a camera to prove they are over 18. Traffic from British users to some of the world's most popular pornography websites has almost halved subsequently, with Pornhub losing more than 1 million visitors in just two weeks. Pornhub's average daily visits fell from 3.2 million in July to 2 million in the first nine days of August, while ex-hamster dropped from 1.7 million to 1.2 million month to month. Pornhub said, quote, as we've seen in many jurisdictions

around the world, there is often a drop in traffic for compliance sites and an increase in traffic for non-compliant sites. The introduction of the UK's age verification scheme coincided with a huge rise in British usage of virtual private networks, services which disguise a user's online location. Several VPN apps shot to the top of the UK's iPhone App Store charts as providers, including Proton and Nord Security, touted tenfold increases in usage. Anyone using a VPN in the UK would appear in similar web's data as if they were accessing a site from another country. It is unclear to what extent the sudden change in traffic patterns to Pornhub and its rivals can be attributed to VPN usage. Their dramatic drop in visitors to adult sites was not mirrored in social networking sites such

as Elon Musk's X and Reddit, which had relatively steady traffic numbers after introducing age checks last month, according to SimilarWeb, end quote. Peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speed. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now that's a deal that doesn't stay.

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Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit Red Bull.com slash bright summer ahead to learn more. See you this summer. What if the movie Her really is one of the end use cases for AI? Or else a lot of people saw the movie Her and I guess we're charmed by it. Quoting TechCrunch. Demand for AI companion applications outside of bigger names like ChatGPT and GROC is growing. Of the 337 active and revenue generating AI companion apps available

worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far, according to new data provided to TechCrunch by App Intelligence firm App Figures. This subsection of the AI market on mobile has now generated $82 million during the first half of the year and is on track to pull in over a $120 million by year end, the firm's analysis indicates. Unlike general purpose chatbots, AI companion apps anthropomorphies AI interactions by allowing users to converse with custom characters, including friends, lovers, girlfriends, or boyfriends, fantasy characters, and more. App figures define the market segment in the same way, describing companion apps as those in which the user can interact with, either pre-made or user-generated synthetic characters

meant to embody an actual personality. Popular apps in the space include replicates, character AI, polybuzz, chai, and others. As of July 2025, AI companion apps across the Apple App Store and Google Play have been downloaded 220 million times globally. During the first half of 2025, downloads were up 88% year-over-year, reaching 60 million. App figures crunched the numbers and found that as of July 2025, AI companion apps have driven $221 million in consumer spending worldwide. So far this year, these apps have generated 64% more revenue than during the same period in 2024. The top 10% of all AI companion apps generate 89% of the revenue in the category the data shows. In addition, around 10% or 33 of the apps have exceeded $1 million in lifetime consumer spending, end quote. Speaking of, Character AI says it's generating revenue at a run rate of more than $30 million and has 20 million monthly active users who spend, on average, 75 minutes a day chatting with the bot. Finally today, wanted to catch up on something that fell through the cracks this week, i.e. that GM wants to take another stab at developing a driverless car for personal use

rather than robotaxi use. Apparently, they are serious enough about this as to be attempting to bring back some ex-cruise workers, but seriously, are they serious about this this time? Quoting Bloomberg. The first step is development of hands-free, eyes-free driving with a human in the vehicle with the ultimate goal being a car that can drive with no one at the wheel, sources said. The plan was detailed in an employee meeting on August 6 by Sterling Anderson, the former Tesla autopilot chief who joined GM earlier this year, said the people who asked not to be identified because the meeting was private. Anderson said he sees autonomy as the future and that GM will add more talent, including trying to bring back some cruise workers and hire new staff for

the automakers Mountain View, California office and other locations, the people said. GM told Bloomberg that it has been running human-driven vehicles on public roads gathering data for the development of self-driving technology. Plans for a hiring push show Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra remains committed to the increasingly competitive driverless vehicle market even after shuttering crews last year. GM exited the robotaxy business following an incident that seriously injured a pedestrian, drawing a crackdown by regulators, and eventually leading to the firing of nine top executives and the resignation of former CEO Kyle Volk. GM exited the cruise robot taxi business in part due to the cost of developing the platform, but said at the time it would keep working on a personally owned autonomous vehicle. Several years ago, GM had planned to have such a vehicle ready for mid-decade,

but no longer has a public target date. Development of the vehicle has been done concurrently with work on GM's Super Cruise hands-free driving system. Despite laying off workers at Cruise and in GM's software unit, Bara has maintained that GM remains committed to driverless vehicles. On the Carmaker's second quarter earnings call, she cited Autonomous Technology, along with expanding GM's domestic supply chain and innovating in batteries, as some of, quote, are clear priorities, end quote. If you're a subscriber to the ad-free feed of this show via Glow, you've not been getting a show these last few days. That's because Glow is shutting down service.

Now, they were supposed to be migrating you, Glow users over to the Tech.Supercast.Tech version of the ad-ex.com. free feed, but despite promising to do so, as of yesterday, the migration hadn't happened. They said the migration would happen today, so be on the lookout for an email or something notifying you of all this, and please let me know if you hear something or not. Again, this was not my choice, and it's entirely out of my hands as Glow is, again, going out of business. I had little warning and had hoped this wouldn't be an issue, but here we are. Hopefully this is sorted by the time you hear this. Talk to you tomorrow. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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