“They Had 2 Years To Kill Perplexity”: Aravind Srinivas Claims Google’s Dependence On Ad Revenue Is Big Hurdle

During a recent Reddit AMA, Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas was asked whether he considered that Google could have an impact on his AI startup with the release of its new Gemini 2.5 models and a growing suite of AI-enhanced search features.

“They’ve had two years to kill Perplexity and haven’t,” Srinivas remarked.

He reasoned that Google’s dependence on advertising revenue is a structural hurdle in adopting full-scale AI-generated responses.

“Think about it: if AI gave you direct answers to the score in a basketball game, how can you sell Ticketmaster ads?” Srinivas said.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported $72.46 billion in ad revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023. [Source: Financial Express]

Srinivas claimed this reliance will limit Google’s willingness to transition to AI-first search fully.

According to a report by Analytics India Mag, the traditional search results on Google encourage users to click on links, generating ad revenue.

On the other hand, AI-driven answers often provide information directly, without users having to visit other sites.

Perplexity is an AI-powered search startup recently valued at $9 billion.

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About Aravind Srinivas

Born in Chennai, Aravind Srinivas earned his Bachelor's and Master's of technology degrees in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras.

Then he completed a doctorate, a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Having a strong interest in artificial intelligence, he worked as a research intern at OpenAI for four months.

In August 2022, Srinivas co-founded Perplexity AI with Denis Yarats, a former Facebook AI scientist, and Andy Konwinski, co-founder of DataBricks.

Perplexity AI built an AI-powered, chat-based search engine that answers user queries directly. By using advanced models like GPT-3, the platform allows information access faster, more reliably, and user-friendly way.

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