Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says Google ‘a giant bureaucratic organization': ‘At some point, they need to…'
Perplexity CEO
Aravind Srinivas recently took an aim at Google saying their core business model is not built for the AI-driven future of web browsing. In a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" on July 16, Srinivas said that Google's reliance on ads is at odds with AI agents. He wrote 'They have business model constraints on letting agents do the clicks and work for you while continuing to charge advertisers enormous money to keep bidding for clicks and conversions'. Stating that the tech giant is constrained by its need to protect ad revenue, he said 'At some point, they need to embrace one path and suffer, in order to come out stronger; rather than hedging and playing both ways'.
Google is a giant bureaucratic organization: Perplexity CEO
Aravind Srinivas also criticized Google's internal structure, calling it 'a giant bureaucratic organization' with 'too many decision makers and disjoint teams.'
Srinivas, during the AMA session, said that he expects Google to "pay close attention" and eventually copy or adopt features from Comet – the company's AI-powered web browser.
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At a Y Combinator event in June, Perplexity CEO said 'If your company is something that can make revenue 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'.
Aravind Srinivas also referred to Google's internal
Project Mariner
as 'similar but quite limited.' He said the browser is designed to prioritize users, not advertisers.
Stating that 'We underestimated people's willingness to pay,' he added that 'We also want to bring a change to this world. Enough of the monopoly of Google'.
Comet is currently available by invitation and only to users of Perplexity's top-tier plan, priced at $200/month or $2,000/year. A free version is planned.
Despite his criticism, Srinivas acknowledged the browser wouldn't be possible without Chromium, the open-source project maintained by Google.
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