In other news, Perplexity has signed a deal with Motorola to have the browser preinstalled on their phones.
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I appreciate him saying it upfront. Makes it easy to stay away from all of their products.
Companies are so removed from what users want, they only focus on what shareholders want to hear and don't consider that users will hate it.
Because there is legal precedent that says shareholders come first.
You can blame Dodge for this. Yes, that Dodge.
But then users use it anyway for some reason. Many people care so little.
Attention is invisible until you take the time to acknowledge it. People will never treat it as a resource of the same value as these companies, because they don't even recognize it as something being taken away from them (despite that it is actually the most precious resource - our literal lives), and that disparity will always be profitable.
Most people are unintelligent sacks of meat, not much critical thought about what they do runs through their minds.
It is legislation's work.
That’s like a cigarette brand marketing themselves as the most cancer-causing.
Oh yeah I'm definitely going to use that. He's a marketing genius.
When using my current browser, any guess as to how often I've said to myself "I need a browser that spies on me more"?
Beep boop, this is your browser speaking. You have stated that you need a browser that spies on you more one (1) times.
And people would voluntarily use this browser ....why?
Weirder things have happened. Like people using Brave voluntarily.
Um, should I stop using Brave?
use librewolf if you want privacy. idk much abt brave but i do know that their ceo is super homophobic, and ive heard that brave sometimes changes the referral links you select to make them money
Is Chrome not doing exactly this?
Chrome doesn't really collect much data directly. It just has no protection against all the trackers on nearly every website that do.
Chrome is relatively limited in scope compared to, say, a user on an instance of degoogled chromium just using the same Google services along with all the other browsing they do. The extra data that's gathered is generally going to be things like a little more DNS query information, (assuming your device isn't already set to default to Google's DNS server) links you visit that don't already have Google's trackers on them (very few) and some general information like when you're turning on your computer and Chrome is opening up.
The real difference is in how Chrome doesn't protect you like other browsers do, and it thus makes more of the collection that Google's services do indirectly, possible.
Perplexity is still being pretty vague here, but if I had to guess, it would essentially just be taking all the stuff that Google would usually get from tracking pixels and ad cookies, and baking that directly in to the browser instead of it relying on individual sites using it.
I hate when people post hyperpartisan reporting because it makes me do homework. In this case, you made me listen to almost an hour of a three hour podcast with three techbros chatting about techbro crap in techbro ways. You owe me years of life.
Anyway, so the conspicuously missing context here is he's asked if they will let go of the subscription model and go after an ad business model instead and he responds "hopefully not" and clarifies that he thinks the AI differentiator from Google search is that it doesn't feed people ads.
He then transitions into saying that you'd need a super hyperspecialized profile for it to make sense and then maybe it could work but they haven't figured out long term memory well enough for that, which is when he talks about why they'd want to have a browser to build that hyperspecialized profile.
This is my least favorite type of misinfo, too, because he's actually kinda saying what they say he's saying, just out of context. But more importantly, because he says some other shit that is more outrageous, too. For example, when explaining why he thinks the subscription business will grow more than the ad business the way he puts it is that "people see it as hiring someone", so they're more willing to spend, and he ponders "how much do people pay for personal assistants and assistant managers and nannies?" and suggests that they'll provide similar services for cheaper to people who can't afford human help.
Which may not be as clickbaity and I get he finds it positive-on-the-aggregate, but is certainly some cyberpunk dystopia stuff that didn't need the out of context quoting to be a thing.
A scholar and a gentleman!
You owe me years of life.
Best I can do is an upvote and a hearty thank you.
Thank you!
Thanks for you sacrifice and service (it does sound like, but it is NOT sarcastic)
We need more people like you, thank you
Thank you!
There is an implication, though, that they intend to collect as much data as possible regardless of which model they use? And in the article, he isn't selling any data, I think. Any mention of that?
To be clear, they ARE building an AI-forward browser and he is very plain about collecting a ton of user info. The way it's presented in context is that they intend to plug it in to their assistant/agent thing and surface relevant stuff to you on searches (which is the potential ad opportunity the article quotes as if it was the sole goal). But yeah, the implication is that they are collecting data regardless, even if the user profile ends up being used to cater AI responses to you specifically, to train models or whatever.
Hearing the guy talk about it I get the impression that he envisions an Apple-like ecosystem where they're constantly ingesting data and you're paying them to have their AI services act as a personal assistant and handle purchases and booking for you directly and so on, on top of anwering queries.
I would rather clip my toenails with a rusty chainsaw, myself, but that seems to be the idea.
Ok how long after this browser goes live till we hear it being used by the FBI to track criminals.
This is really good information, now I know to avoid their browser like the plague.
Hey, look for that browser to fail instantly as no one will use it.
They don't want people to use it. They want Google to give them a big bag of money so they can integrate it into chrome.
Dumb and dumber will love it, ts,ts,ts. Some nerds...
Nothing wrong with typescript
Jesus, that escalated quickly...
I would like for the people, who come up with these ideas, to dogfood their own product. Actually force them to try their own medicine. It would be a single digit percentage of acceptance then
You grossly underestimate how much some people truly love the idea of highly personalized ads. People who believe they are the best possible outcome and cannot fathom why anyone would have any problem with them at all. That's who you are asking to dogfood this product, and they would and would find no issues with it.
Why would I use such a browser?
Because some influencer say you should. Works this way for too many people.
The amount of folks I see use Opera GX "gaming browser" because some influencer said so...
Where is the hacktivism when you need it? These companies need to be gutted from the inside out.
Begin, the AI wars have.
"Help us improve your User Experience by trying as hard as possible to induce to spend money you don't have on crap you don't need."
I think I read somewhere they want to buy Chrome from Google if they are forced to sell. So not many changes, just switching owners who ultimately do the same thing.
i’m not a Chrome user, so screw both google and perplexity.
some people will see this as a feature to be desired, not a bug
Srinivas believes that Perplexity’s browser users will be fine with such tracking because the ads should be more relevant to them.
Believes it, or is just spinning it that way?
You could show me an ad for exactly what I want in that moment and I'd immediately not want it any more.
Enough already.
Can't sell reams and reams of customer data if you don't have any customers.
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