Perplexity AI is building its own browser to collect your data and show targeted ads
AI company Perplexity's CEO Aravind Srinivas has announced in a recent interview with TBPN hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays that the company is working on its own browser called Comet. Srinivas says that the idea is that the company wants to collect user data even outside the Perplexity app. "We want to get data even outside the app to better understand you," he said.advertisementSrinivas says with the data that the company collects on users outside the app, it wants to show users targeted ads. '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 Perplexity CEO said.Srinivas says that the Comet browser will likely be out sometime next month. He said during the interview that it should have been out by now but the company was facing some delays because they underestimated the complexity of building a browser. However, he says the browser should be out by mid-May.
Perplexity plans about launching its own browser are interesting to say the least. First, the strategy of collecting user data to show targeted ads is very similar to Google's approach with the Chrome browser. Second, the Comet browser is also based on Chromium, which is the open-source platform that powered several browsers like Arc, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox.advertisementAnd finally, in the ongoing Google vs US Department of Justice monopoly trial, Perplexity was one of the companies that showed interest in buying Chrome in case Google is forced to divest the search browser. Perplexity's chief business officer, Dmitry Shevelenko has said that the company will be able to run Chrome at its current scale without compromising on the quality of the product or introducing any new costs. Google is in the middle of a search monopoly trial where in the US court could potentially break up the company and force Google to sell Chrome.Currently, Yahoo and OpenAI are also bidding for the Chrome browser if it becomes available for purchase.
Perplexity has been quite busy this week. The company debuted its AI chatbot as the default AI assistant on the new Moto Razr 60 Ultra replacing Gemini (as default). This week, the company also rolled out an AI voice assistant in the iOS app. Unlike Apple Intelligence, which only works on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, and the iPhone 16 series, the new Perplexity AI assistant also works on older iPhones.
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