Technology

AI startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to purchase Google's Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant's web-search dominance. From a report: Perplexity's offer is significantly more than its own valuation, which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall Street Journal that several investors including large venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full. Estimates of Chrome's enterprise value vary widely but recent ones have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is weighing whether to force Google to sell the browser as a means of weakening Google's stranglehold on web search. Mehta last year ruled that Google illegally monopolized the search market and is expected to rule this month on how to restore competition.

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Spirit Airlines has warned investors that it may go out of business, just months after exiting bankruptcy. From a report: In a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, it said there was "substantial doubt" over its "ability to continue as a going concern within 12 months." The budget airline said it was harder to make money because of weak demand for domestic leisure travel and "elevated domestic capacity," meaning increased competition on such routes. Spirit reported a net loss of $245.8 million for the second quarter of 2025, up from a $192.9 million loss for the second quarter of 2024.

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Elon Musk has threatened Apple with legal action over alleged antitrust violations related to rankings of the Grok AI chatbot app, which is owned by his AI startup xAI. From a report: "Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action," Musk wrote in a post on his social media platform X. Apple declined to comment on Musk's threat. "Why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your 'Must Have' section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics?" Musk said in another post.

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darwinmac writes: Firefox 141 rolled out a shiny new AI-powered smart tab grouping feature (it tries to auto-organize your tabs using a local model), but it turns out the local "Inference" process that powers it is acting like an energy-sucking monster. Users are reporting massive CPU spikes and battery drain and calling the feature "garbage" that's ruining their browsing experience.

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