You may not have heard of Perplexity, although I have mentioned it here as a particularly good research tool. At work when I recommended it to colleagues as an alternative to ChatGPT, no one even knew the name. The situation is unlikely to change. Our company just announced ChatGPT access for all employees to the exclusion of other products, likely the result of simple familiarity.

Perplexity has a very small user base compared with ChatGPT. Perplexity had approximately 22 million active users in the first half of 2025, up by 2 million from October 2024. ChatGPT is on another level entirely with hundreds of millions of users every month, more than 120 million logging in daily and more than a billion queries processed each day. Ten million pay for ChatGPT Plus.

Nor has Perplexity’s CEO reached celebrity status. Aravind Srinivas is a 31-year-old computer engineer with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. He held research roles at OpenAI and other AI firms before co-founding Perplexity in 2022. But his investors are formidable and include Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, GitHub’s former CEO Nat Friedman, angel investor Elad Gil and large venture funds. A spokesperson for Perplexity said its investors have agreed to back the transaction in full.

The offer surprised the tech world for two reasons — first because the $34.5 billion price tag is nearly twice Perplexity’s own valuation of $18 billion, and second, because the timing is so dramatic, coming just before an expected ruling in the antitrust case that could force Google to divest Chrome. Last August, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly in internet search and is widely expected to issue a decision this month on how to restore competition.

In a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Srinivas framed the proposal as a public interest solution. He said the offer “is designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable independent operator focused on continuity, openness and consumer protection.”

It should be noted that Perplexity last month launched its own browser, Comet. Comet is built on Google’s Chromium, just like Chrome itself, and integrates Perplexity’s AI search engine directly into the browser, so you don’t have to switch between a search window and an AI chat window. It can summarize content instantly, compare information across tabs, schedule meetings and send emails, all without leaving the browser. Chrome cannot perform those kinds of agent-style tasks natively, although it is working on this capability.

Comet is not currently included in either Perplexity’s free plan or its paid individual plan, but the company says it’s coming. I don’t pay for Perplexity at this time because the free version meets my needs, which is a refreshing change from most other products that push users toward paid subscriptions. I plan to try Comet once it’s available without a fee, and you should too.

Now to the bigger idea. Early market dominance does not always mean the product is the best or the one that lasts. In web browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer once held a commanding lead because it shipped with Windows. It was overtaken by Chrome when users found speed, stability and an extension ecosystem they preferred. In social media, MySpace looked unbeatable until Facebook offered a cleaner experience and better network effects. In phones, BlackBerry set the standard for mobile email until the iPhone changed what people expected from a handset. Search followed a similar path. Yahoo and AltaVista were the names everyone knew until Google delivered faster, cleaner results.

Perplexity deserves a chance to be judged on its results. The bid for Chrome might be a long shot, and it will face legal hurdles. But it has already done one useful thing. It has brought attention to a product many people have never tried. Try Perplexity. Try Comet when it’s available for free. In the off-chance that this proposal makes it through legal scrutiny and Google is forced to divest Chrome, you will be ready, and in the meantime, you will have a useful new set of tools.

Leslie Meredith has been writing about technology for more than a decade. As a mom of four, value, usefulness and online safety take priority. Have a question? Email Leslie at asklesliemeredith@gmail.com.