Perplexity Is Coming To Moto But You Might Not Want To Take Advantage Of It

At Least They Clearly State They Plan To Track Everything You Do?

Perplexity has won a major battle against Google and it’s stranglehold on Android devices.  Google faces more than a few antitrust court cases over it’s habit of forcing any Android device manufacturers to make Google the default search engine.  Alphabet made it very clear they would react poorly to any company which didn’t follow their dictate, with serious consequences if the company chose to offer another search engine as the default.  They also made the same demand for their Google Assistant AI helper on Android, blocking competitors from being able to offer their products on Android devices without the user going out of their way to switch.  This has lead to the announcement that the AI powered Perplexity search engine will be included with Moto’s newly announced flip phones.

While it is good to see Google getting a bit of a comeuppance, you might want to think twice before using Perplexity.  The CEO of Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, recently stated on a podcast that they will track everything a user does on a device which has Perplexity’s Comet browser installed on it.  To be very clear, he does not mean they will only track things you do while using Comet, the new Perplexity designed browser, he is stating they will track absolutely every action you make on a device with Perplexity’s Comet installed regardless if you are using the app or not. 

As you might guess, this is so that they can sell the data to advertising companies so that they can serve you up targeted advertisements based on your usage.  He boasts about how knowing exactly where you spend your money and what you email about will be amazing for their users as the advertisements will be directly targeted at them.  He doesn’t seem to have any qualms about the privacy concerns this raises, he truly believes customers will embrace this action.  One suspects your favourite ad blocker will never be ported to Comet.