Tuesday’s disclosure that Perplexity wants to buy Chrome may be intended to influence a federal judge more than Google/Alphabet. Either way, it’s getting a lot of attention, which might have been Perplexity’s primary goal.

Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google's web browser and claims it has the backing to pull it off.

The AI search startup looks less like an acquirer and more like a company to be acquired, but its CEO understands that optics matter.