Alright, I have a confession to make.
I actually love Perplexity. Even though I used to be their biggest hater.
But.. I'm not sure I can say the same about the company, or anything they stand for.
Let's dive in, aspect by aspect.
Perplexity as a product
When Perplexity first launched, I was quick to write it off. It felt and looked like little more than a ChatGPT wrapper with web search grounding. Which while that was new at the time, it didnt feel groundbreaking. As more AI providers integrated web search manually, the need for their product felt more and more unnecessary.
Yet they continued to build, and what they have today is something genuinely impressive. It's fast, it's accurate, customizable, and it has more features than I can throw a stick at. I havent even been able to try all of them yet.
Beyond search, theyve added support for deep research, Labs which makes full reports and deep dives on any topic, Spaces which can ground responses to any links or documents you give it, Assistant which allows it to become your voice assistant on Android, and have a deeper integration on iOS, and more.
I'm still on the fence to if I would pay full price for it, but the value is absolutely there. It puts endless information in my pocket, in a way nothing before it has.
Comet.
One of Perplexity's newest ventures is Comet - their AI Chrome fork that aims to provide a deeper integration than ever between Perplexity and your sites and apps.
I have been testing it for a few weeks, and I'm.. perplexed.
For some things, it's fantastic. It genuinely saves me time, and makes me feel superhuman. Like being able to browse for something and have the assistant update my Notion doc in the background.
But despite that.. I just dont see myself coming back. Since none of the agent is on mobile, it just feels a little counterproductive, even cumbersome on desktop. If I've sat down at a computer, I want to do work. Not have Comet do the work while I scroll Reel son my phone. If I could do that I wouldn't be on my computer.
That said, Comet is still evolving and I will continue to test it over time, and I do have cautious optimism for the team.
The company itself.
Now we need to address the ugly. The Perplexity team and the company itself.
Perplexity seem to have adopted a very aggressive, polarizing model that pioneers the idea of "it doesn't matter if people hate us if they all say our name".
Now this is nothing new, Tim Sweeney has been doing similar for years.
But the problem with this is that it severely harms your long term rapport, and it also makes users FAR more skeptical of the longevity of your product.
If you're going to openly admit that your browser is tracking everything you do to deliver hyper personalized ads, and attempt to buy Chrome as a publicity stunt, and pick fights with countless people, it starts to feel like a waste of trust to place any of that in your product.
At which point do we stop finding it acceptable to separate the product from its creator?
-Ethan