The CEO of Perplexity said Google needs to rethink its stance In the AI Browser War.
On Reddit “Ask Me Anything” on Wednesday, Aravind Srinivas said Google's business model was at odds with the rise of AI agents.
Google's core business relies on displaying ads when users click and charging advertisers. However, AI agents built into web browsers can view, compare and even make decisions on behalf of users. This means that there will be fewer human eyeballs in advertising and fewer clicks to sell.
“They have business model constraints on having their agents do clicks and working for you.
While Google is testing tools like agents, Srinivas said the tech giant is constrained by the need to protect advertising revenue.
“At some point, they need to accept one path and suffer, rather than hedging and playing both ways to come out stronger,” he wrote.
Srinivas also criticized Google's internal structure. “It's a huge bureaucracy,” he wrote.
Google's parent company Alphabet has around 183,300 employees, generating approximately $350 billion in total revenue last year, according to its annual report. The Google Search division has brought about approximately $18.1 billion, spurring increased user recruitment and advertisers' spending.
In contrast, Comet's product lead Leonid Persiansevi wrote on the Reddit forum that the team intentionally holds “staying quickly and with agility.”
Srinivas has admitted that comets would not exist without Chromium, an open source browser project maintained by Google. However, he said the confusion bets on a different vision. Agents work on behalf of the user rather than the advertiser.
“We underestimated people's willingness to pay,” Srinivas said in response to a question about the shift in confusion from advertising.
“We also want to make a difference in this world. We've got a good Google monopoly.”
Comet is available only for invitations and is limited to users with Perplexity's highest tier plan. This is $200 a month or $2,000 a year. The company said it will deploy a free version of its browser.
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Perplexity and Google did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Any copy of the high-tech Giants is fine
Srinivas said Wednesday that it hopes Google will “take great care” and will ultimately copy or adopt the feature from Comet.
He pointed out Project Mariner, an internal effort by Google. This is “similar but rather limited” compared to comets.
At the Y Combinator event in June, Srinivas said that large companies “copy the good ones.”
“If your company is something that can make money on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars or potentially billions of dollars, you should always assume that a model company will copy it,” Srinivas said in a conversation uploaded to YC's YouTube channel on Friday.
In a follow-up statement to Business Insider, Jesse Dwyer, director of communications at Perplexity, wrote that not only large companies would copy, but would “do everything they can and speak up.”
Perplexity launched the Comet browser on July 9th. That day, Reuters reported that Openai is working on a web browser that challenges Google Chrome.
“Browser Wars must be won by the user. If the user loses the browser War III, it comes from the familiar playbook. It is an exclusive action by “all companies” that forces “all companies” in the market,” writes Dwyer.
Openai did not respond to requests for comment regarding Perplexity's remarks.
