Perplexity AI is expanding beyond an app and web page to an entire web browser. The coming Comet browser, built on the same Chromium platform used for Google’s own Chrome offering, hopes to keep users in a single place and in the thrall of a single AI overlord.
If that fails, at least the company will get to serve some ads. That’s according to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, speaking to the TBPN podcast.
Comet incoming
Comet: A Browser for Agentic Search by Perplexity
Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/SwVSwudgtN
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) February 24, 2025
“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,” said Srinivas, adding, “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.”
The proposed Comet browser uses the same business model as every other ‘platform’ on the internet. Google (and everything Google does), Facebook (and everything Meta does), Microsoft (you get the idea), and other major and minor players harvest user information to turn into new products or advertising revenue. The easiest way to do this is to create an integrated platform capable of collecting large amounts of data that can be tied to a single user.
That doesn’t mean you, specifically, are being spied on. Even if you are, kinda. That data is anonymised, but if an ad that suits your particular needs and/or weaknesses shows up, you’ll see it. It’s why VodaPay exists and why Discovery is branching into everything it can — you’ll either take on more services or become fodder for businesses looking to pay for the details you’ve generated so they can develop and market their stuff to you.
In Perplexity’s case, it might not need to haul the Comet browser out of the missile silo if it can convince an American court to let it buy Chrome outright from Google. Comet wouldn’t threaten Google’s browser dominance (and that’s part of the problem with Google), but something else already does — the search giant’s major platform could be split apart from the main company. This is an outcome that Google hopes to avoid, citing the problem of handing over user data wholesale to another entity. Like Open AI. Or Perplexity.
