Tech Solidarity: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas Wants AI Rival Google to Keep its Chrome Browser
- The Indian-American-led company, which has been called to testify in the ongoing remedies case, also expressed interest in buying the browser.
Perplexity AI CEO and co-founder Aravind Srinivas doesn’t want Google to be broken up, so he’s pushing back on the Department of Justice’s proposal to force the tech giant to sell its Chrome browser. In a post on X on April 21, the Indian American confirmed that his company, an AI search rival of Google, has been asked to testify in the DOJ’s landmark antitrust case against the tech giant.
The remedy phase of the DOJ case began in Washington, D.C., on April 21. The case intends to determine remedies after Google was found to have an illegal monopoly over online search. The department is “seeking structural reforms, including the divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser, limitations on its AI product deals, and a ban on exclusivity in default app agreements,” The Hill reported.
“Google should not be broken up,” Srinivas wrote on X. “Chrome should remain within and continue to be run by Google. Google deserves a lot of credit for open-sourcing Chromium, which powers Microsoft’s Edge and will also power Perplexity’s Comet,” he wrote.
After spending a year as a research intern at Google’s Deepmind and its headquarters from 2020 to 2021, Srinivas co-founded in Perplexity in 2022,k along with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski.
Srinivas said he intends to testify that “Chrome should remain within and continue to be run by Google,” but that Android should become “more open to consumer choice.” He said Perplexity’s own upcoming browser, Comet, is built on Chromium — the open-source framework Google created.
But The Verge reported that Perplexity is interested in buying Chrome if Google will sell it. Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko, in his testimony on April 23, said the company would be happy to take on the project. He said the company would be able to run the browser “at the scale of Chrome without diminishing its quality or charging for it,” according to The Verge report.
Meanwhile, in the opening arguments on April 21, the DOJ argued that the judge should “force Google to divest from its Chrome browser, suggesting it could send a message to other ‘monopolists’ amid the government’s multiple antitrust battles with Big Tech,” The Hill reported. But Google contended that the DOJ’s proposed remedies are “fundamentally flawed” and “completely untethered” from the conduct at issue in the case — Google’s exclusive distribution agreements, the publication added.
According to The Hill, “the remedies phase comes at a time when Google is facing intensifying legal scrutiny on multiple fronts.” Additionally, just days before the latest hearings began, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that “the company had also violated antitrust laws in the digital advertising market,” a DOJ press release said.
The Google antitrust case stems from a ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last August that the company had illegally maintained a monopoly over online search through a series of exclusive agreements with device manufacturers and browser developers that secured its search engine as the default. The Gujarat-born judge made headlines for his historic ruling that Google illegally abused its monopoly in the search industry, violating antitrust laws. The tech giant” used exclusive agreements to make itself the ‘default’ search engine and ad provider on devices, giving it a major advantage over its rival,” he said in his 277-page ruling. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” he said, announcing his decision.
Mehta’s ruling was based on a 2020 lawsuit — the U.S. et al. v. Google — filed against Google by the Department of Justice and several states that resulted in a 10-week trial last year. The lawsuit accused the company of “illegally cementing its dominance, in part, by paying other companies, like Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers,” according to The New York Times.