Could Google Chrome soon be OpenAI Chrome?

AI companies are throwing multi-billion dollar offers at Google with one goal in mind: Acquiring the search giant's web browser Google Chrome.

Perplexity AI recently offered more than $34 billion to Google for Chrome. OpenAI, which has much larger coffers, has also expressed strong interest in buying the web browser.

But, why are all these massive AI companies offering to throw money at Google for a web browser? Is Google Chrome even for sale?

Here's why AI companies are offering big bucks for Chrome

Google's Chrome web browser has a massive user base, with close to 3.5 billion users. Chrome dominates the search space, making up around 68 percent of the web browser market share. 

Chrome is a huge part of Google's operation, so it is very unlikely that Google would be looking to sell its Chrome web browser – by choice.

Last year, Google lost a huge antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice that found that the Big Tech company violated federal law in order to maintain a monopoly in online search.

As a result of losing the antitrust case, the judge will look to break up Google, forcing the company to break their hold over the industry. One recommendation that the DOJ has made to the judge: Force Google to sell its Chrome web browser.

The courts have yet to make their decision, but the very thought of Google being forced to put Chrome up for sale has AI companies salivating at the thought of acquiring it.

Why is Google Chrome so important to Google and the AI companies?

Google Chrome's dominance in the web browser space is significant, but why is it so integral to Google? 

Google controls the internet's most popular web browser. Google makes its search product the default search engine on Chrome. Google maintains its search engine dominance. Google's search product, its primary source of revenue, brings in hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

As for the AI companies? AI giants like OpenAI and Perplexity would love to have direct access to that user base, as they look to integrate AI agents into web browsers. The vision for many AI companies is for users to be able to access AI chatbots and all of their functions directly from a web browser, without any need to login to a website or platform. Furthermore, AI companies would love to own that user data in order to better train their AI chatbots. In fact, some AI companies have already launched their own web browsers in order to see these things come to fruition. However, it'll be a long while before any of these browsers see anything close to Chrome's market dominance, if at all.

So, the real question though, is whether Google will actually have to sell Chrome. The judge will likely make their decision soon. However, Tom's Guide spoke with one expert, Info-Tech Research Group analyst Thomas Randall, who pointed out that it's unlikely that federal regulators would approve the sale of Google Chrome to another tech giant, regardless of whether they are in the search or AI space.

Whatever the court decides, Google will likely fight to the end to keep Chrome and appeal the decision.