American AI startup Perplexity has made a formal offer to buy the Chrome browser from Google for $34.5 billion, an amount almost double the company’s own market valuation (about $18 billion), the Wall Street Journal reported.

The offer comes amid an expected ruling by Judge Amit Mehta, who is considering whether to force Google to sell Chrome as a measure against its monopoly in web search. Last year, Mehta ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search engine market, and a decision on specific sanctions is expected this month.

Perplexity said the purchase would be “in the greatest public interest” and would place Chrome in the hands of a “capable, independent operator.” The company promises to continue supporting the Chromium project and keep Google as the default search engine (with the ability to be changed by the user).

Google has not officially commented on the proposal, but CEO Sundar Pichai has already warned that a potential sale of Chrome or sharing data with competitors would hurt the business.

Chrome has about 3.5 billion users and holds more than 60% of the global browser market.

Perplexity was founded in 2022 in San Francisco and recently launched its own experimental browser, Comet. Meanwhile, it has been sued by two subsidiaries of News Corp, publisher of the WSJ.

Analysts believe that Judge Mehta is unlikely to order a sale of Chrome, although during closing arguments he described this option as “a little cleaner and more elegant” than other proposed solutions to increase competition. | BGNES