The Wall Street Journal announcement that AI startup Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer for Google Chrome reads like nothing short of journeyman satire.

This is a company valued at roughly $18 billion offering nearly twice that for a single product inside Alphabet. The audacity is remarkable; the plausibility is nil. Chrome is one of the most widely used pieces of software on earth, with more than 3.5 billion users and over 60% of the browser market. Even if Google were forced to sell it under antitrust pressure - a highly speculative outcome - Perplexity would still face a mountain of logistical, financial, and competitive barriers.

The real story is about how, in 2025, stunts like this are increasingly part of the playbook for attention-starved companies in competitive markets. This is PR as product. Perplexity’s offer is a signal to investors, users, and regulators that they matter enough to be in the same conversation as Google, even if the math and the mechanics make the idea nonsensical to the point of absurd.

Perplexity told the Journal that several large venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full. That alone raises questions. Chrome’s estimated enterprise value ranges between $20 billion and $50 billion. Even at the low end, acquiring it would be the most expensive browser purchase in history. Browsers aren’t like game studios or adtech startups; they’re complex, constantly evolving platforms tied deeply into an ecosystem. Buying Chrome = acquiring a global distribution engine entangled with Google’s search monopoly.

Google, for its part, hasn’t indicated any willingness to sell. Sundar Pichai testified earlier this year that such a divestiture would harm the business, deter investment in new technology, and create security risks. And he’s right. Chrome isn’t just a browser; it’s a gateway to Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and countless other services. Splitting it off would be like extracting AWS from Amazon - not impossible in theory, but operationally nightmarish.

The legal backdrop fails to add a veneer of plausibility. Yes, Judge Amit Mehta is weighing remedies after finding Google guilty of illegally monopolizing search. And yes, a forced sale of Chrome is one option; but reasonable analysts consider it unlikely. By making a public bid, Perplexity wants to position itself as a white knight waiting in the wings. In reality, this is like showing up at a property auction for the Biltmore Estate and declaring you’ll buy it in Chuck E Cheese tokens.

Making noise about $34.5 billion bid costs nothing but a press release and a few phone calls to reporters. The payoff is headlines across the tech press, tweets from industry commentators, and a round of investor chatter. In a crowded AI field dominated by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google itself, getting mindshare is half the battle.

This is hardly a new tactic. Elon Musk mastered it over the past decade, using public offers, half-formed ideas, and bold proclamations to dominate the narrative. Many never materialized, but they kept Tesla and SpaceX in the spotlight. In a more traditional vein, corporate raiders in the 1980s would float bids for companies they didn’t seriously intend to buy, simply to force a reaction or extract concessions.

The difference now is that attention itself is a form of currency. For an AI startup trying to grow its user base and fend off better-capitalized competitors, a stunt like this can be a marketing campaign dressed in M&A clothing. Perplexity’s name is now tied to Chrome in search engines, in social media, and in the minds of casual observers. The specific outcome of the bid is irrelevant; the coverage is the point.

Even if we suspend disbelief and assume Google were willing to sell, the road from headline to closing is filled with landmines. First, there’s the financing. Perplexity’s valuation is $18 billion. To raise $34.5 billion in equity or debt would require unprecedented (and entirely unlikely) investor confidence, especially for a company without a proven monetization engine at Chrome’s scale. These theoretical "venture capitalists" apparently salivating for a slice of the Perplexity / Chrome pie might express theoretical interest in “backing” the deal, but that is not the same as wiring funds.

Second, the operational challenge is immense. Chrome is maintained by thousands of Google engineers, supported by a global infrastructure, and integrated into multiple Google services. Any acquirer would need to replicate or negotiate ongoing access to these systems. Without them, the value of Chrome as a standalone product plummets. There’s also the matter of user trust. Handing Chrome to a two-year-old AI company could spark security and privacy concerns, potentially driving users to competitors.

Finally, regulators would scrutinize such a deal intensely. An AI company controlling the most widely used browser would raise its own antitrust questions, especially if Perplexity intended to integrate its own search or AI tools by default.

There’s a deeper irony here. The Justice Department’s case against Google is built on the idea that the company uses its control of search distribution to entrench its dominance. Chrome is a critical piece of that puzzle. By signaling interest in buying Chrome, Perplexity is effectively performing a hypothetical remedy for the regulator: “See, there are buyers!” But the regulator’s job is not to create a bidding war for Chrome; it’s to restore competition. That might mean weakening Google’s contracts with Apple, limiting default search payments, or mandating data sharing - measures far less dramatic than selling the browser outright.

Antitrust theater is not new. When companies face regulatory pressure, rivals often step forward with “solutions” that double as self-promotion. Think of how smaller search engines like DuckDuckGo position themselves in debates over search neutrality. The playbook is consistent: use the moment to get your name in the policy conversation, even if the proposed remedy is unrealistic.

There is a downside to this approach. If a company gains a reputation for headline-chasing without substance, it loses credibility with serious partners, customers, and regulators. For now, Perplexity’s bid has generated buzz and a wave of free media. But if its moves become a pattern (and the dubious provenance of the "Apple is about to acquire Perplexity" stories suggest it will) investors may start to ask whether the company’s energy is going into product development or press theatrics.

In tech, brand perception compounds. Once a narrative sets in - whether it’s “visionary disruptor” or “publicity-hungry opportunist” - it can be hard to shake. For a young company in a trust-sensitive market like AI, that matters. Perplexity’s future depends on being seen as a credible alternative to Google and OpenAI, not just as a PT Barnum-oriented also-ran.

Perplexity will not buy Chrome. The deal is financially implausible, strategically incoherent for Google, and legally uncertain. But as a piece of marketing, it has arguably succeeded - for now. The offer puts Perplexity in the same sentence as Google in a global news cycle. It aligns the company with the regulatory narrative of challenging monopolies. And it reinforces a brand identity of boldness and ambition.

Whether that’s enough to justify the backlash and the inevitable skepticism is another matter.