Backed by Nvidia, the technology firm Perplexity AI has begun laying quiet but deliberate plans to gain a foothold in the mobile market. Its aim is clear: to challenge Google’s longstanding supremacy in the field of search. Central to this effort is the desire to make its own tools, driven by artificial intelligence, easier for the average person to reach and use. As part of this broader design, the company’s chief, Aravind Srinivas, is in discussions with phone manufacturers to secure a place for Comet, Perplexity’s in-house browser. Whether as a built-in application or as the primary browsing tool, the hope is to plant it directly on the devices people carry every day.
It is a move not unlike the one that once helped Google secure its hold over the mobile web. Chrome arrives on nearly every Android handset, while Safari is deeply embedded into Apple’s software. Between the two, they hold an overwhelming share of the mobile browsing world, just shy of total dominance. Perplexity, for its part, does not attempt to imitate. Instead, it sets out to build something apart: a tool that does not echo the old way, but offers a new one.
More Than a Browser: Introducing Comet, the AI Assistant for Your Online Life
Curiously, Perplexity does not present Comet as a browser in the usual sense, but rather as a kind of thinking tool, an assistant shaped by artificial intelligence. Its purpose is not merely to display websites, but to guide the user through tasks that once lay beyond the reach of ordinary browsing.
Though built upon Chromium, the same foundation used by Chrome and many of its rivals, Comet is made to do more than retrieve pages. Within a single window, it can search for information, produce concise summaries of what it finds, organise appointments, and even compose replies to messages. These functions, once scattered across several tools, are here brought together under one roof.
Partnerships, Rejections, and Rumors of a Buyout: The Power Moves Behind Comet
In June, it was reported by Bloomberg that Perplexity had entered discussions with both Samsung and Apple over the possible integration of its AI-driven search system into their devices, a move that might lend greater intelligence to assistants like Siri and Bixby.
The company’s decision to develop its own browser, Comet, came after Google declined to list it among the default search options on Chrome. Faced with this refusal, Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s chief, chose to chart a separate path rather than depend on another firm’s goodwill.
There are also signs that Apple, recognising the firm’s rising stature, has weighed the idea of buying it outright. Though no deal has emerged, the matter is said to have been raised among Apple’s senior leadership, which suggests that Perplexity has become difficult to ignore.
Final Words
And thus the scene is set for what could be termed as Browser Wars: The AI Awakening. The grandiose stunt that Perplexity is attempting by putting Comet on smartphones is not merely a business game, it is a wager that customers are willing to abandon the comfortable oppression of Chrome and Safari in favor of something truly intelligent. Google and Apple have not become empires by chance and they are not likely to lose market share without a struggle.
However, in an era of artificial intelligence where it is predicted that the way we relate to information will be transformed, maybe there is space to have a browser that thinks before it browses. At least in the short term, Perplexity is taking the long view, wooing manufacturers behind the scenes as Google hones its competitive fangs. It is not a matter of whether the browser wars will reignite again but whether the users will realize when it does.
