💰 Chrome For Sale: Why OpenAI Is Betting The Farm

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OpenAI is eyeing what may be the tech acquisition of the decade: Google's Chrome browser. The AI company's product chief, Nick Turley, testified at Google's antitrust hearings that they would "absolutely" purchase Chrome if given the opportunity.

This potential acquisition follows a federal judge's ruling last year that Google holds an illegal monopoly over search. The Department of Justice is now pushing for aggressive remedies, including forcing Google to sell Chrome—a browser that commands approximately 64% of global market share.

The Strategic Value of Chrome

Reports suggest Chrome could cost around $50 billion, representing 16% of OpenAI's entire company value. It's a massive purchase that would deplete OpenAI's finances, but it could prove to be the most important strategic move the company makes in the coming years.

Chrome isn't just another browser—it's potentially the most valuable digital real estate in the world after the iPhone. As the primary interface through which billions access the internet, Chrome serves as a crucial traffic controller that directs user attention and activity.

The browser's value stems from three key factors:

1. It controls the user relationship, sitting between users and everything else online

2. It benefits from more software moving to the cloud (email, Notion, Figma etc)

3. It's increasingly becoming the new operating system

Currently, Google uses Chrome as a defensive moat for its core business, search advertising. Chrome ensures Google Search remains the default, channeling vast amounts of user queries directly to Google's ad-supported search engine. The value of this default position is so significant that Google pays Apple an estimated $15-20 billion annually just to be the default search engine in Safari.

If OpenAI acquired Chrome, it could make ChatGPT the default search engine on roughly 3 billion devices, instantly solving its distribution challenge.

OpenAI's Revenue Ambitions

OpenAI is forecasting massive revenue growth to investors, projecting up to $125 billion by 2029. While some aspects of this projection seem questionable—such as $3 billion from agent services in 2025, heavily reliant on SoftBank's commitment for their "Cristal Intelligence" platform—there's a clear path to substantial revenue growth: advertising.

The company currently has approximately 800 million monthly active users but only 17 million paying subscribers—a conversion rate of just 2.1%. The remaining 98% of users represent both a significant cost (AI compute power is expensive) and an enormous opportunity.

For context, Google generates about $61 per user globally from ads. If ChatGPT could monetize its remaining 783 million users at that rate—which isn't currently feasible—it would generate $47 billion in annual revenue. This explains why advertising is crucial to OpenAI's future.

By 2029, OpenAI projects $25 billion in revenue from "new products" and monetization of free users, expected to start contributing meaningfully in 2026. The recent launch of shopping features within ChatGPT represents the first step in this direction.

The Current State of AI Search

While AI search tools are growing rapidly, they still represent a small fraction of global search queries. ChatGPT's web search now handles about 1% of Google's search queries per week (1 billion versus Google's 100 billion). However, this statistic doesn't tell the full story.

A significant portion of ChatGPT's usage involves non-web search queries, meaning AI tools are both creating demand for new types of searches (content generation, random questions, AI conversations) and cannibalizing some of Google's traditional search functions, particularly for research tasks. By some measures, ChatGPT already accounts for roughly 10% of Google's user query volume.

For comparison, Reddit processes approximately 350 million search queries weekly, while Perplexity handles about 115 million.

The growth potential for AI search tools is substantial. Pretty much every consumer behavior study shows that people trade complexity for convenience. Once AI platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini deliver "good enough" answers 90% of the time, convenience will win. Features like related suggestions and embedded shopping recommendations will further shift consumer behavior away from traditional search.

Chrome's Value Proposition for OpenAI

Using Google's average revenue per user of $61 and multiplying by Chrome's approximately 3 billion users suggests the browser contributes around $180 billion to Google's annual revenue—more than half of Google's total ($348 billion).

However, this doesn't mean OpenAI would generate similar revenue. Google has spent years refining its user interface to maximize revenue per query and possesses proprietary data that allows it to monetize more effectively than any competitor.

Apple's 2018 exploration of purchasing Bing illustrates this challenge. Apple discovered that even if it acquired Microsoft's search engine, it would generate less revenue than the $20 billion it receives annually from Google for default search placement—due to weaker monetization capabilities.

OpenAI faces an even steeper challenge with monetization. The company hasn't yet developed effective advertising models for AI search, which is why AI overviews primarily appear on non-commercial searches. Additionally, while Google excels at monetizing shopping and local intent searches, ChatGPT's primary uses—research, coding, writing—are less commercially viable.

Nevertheless, as a growth-focused company, OpenAI's interest in Chrome isn't necessarily about immediate profitability. It's about strategic positioning over the next 20 years and potentially unseating Google as the primary gateway to information online.

Implications for the Internet

If OpenAI does acquire Chrome, the ramifications for the broader internet would be profound:

• Businesses heavily reliant on SEO traffic, like HubSpot, would see their organic discovery continue to decline as AI snippets replace traditional search results.

• Marketers would need to pivot further toward first-party channels:e mail, apps, events, rather than relying on search referrals.

• The importance of owning direct customer relationships would increase, as would the value of in-person events and sales-driven approaches.

• With AI providing instant, high-quality responses that eliminate the need to browse multiple links, we would likely see fewer but higher-intent clicks, potentially driving up cost-per-impression rates for this type of search/answer engine.

• The e-commerce landscape would become more complex: who owns the product affiliate link inside an AI answer? This isn't unprecedented—a recent controversy revealed that Honey, the popular browser extension, was secretly replacing content creators' affiliate links with its own without user notification.

Acquisition Hurdles

The acquisition faces significant hurdles. OpenAI doesn't have that amount of cash on hand, and few potential backers remain who aren't already investing as much as possible in the AI company. SoftBank, for example, has already had to raise funds from third parties for its existing OpenAI commitments.

An equity deal presents another option, but this seems unlikely given Google's previous unwillingness to partner with OpenAI. Earlier attempts by OpenAI to integrate Google's search technology into ChatGPT were rebuffed, with Google wary of aiding a competitor. During the antitrust trial, Turley noted that Google's data would have made ChatGPT "dramatically better."

The Road Ahead

Will Chrome actually be spun off from Google? Prediction markets suggest it might, but historical precedent from the Microsoft antitrust hearings in 2001 indicates that even if ordered, the process could take years to implement.

In the meantime, OpenAI has begun laying groundwork for monetizing its free user base. Last week's shopping feature launch represents a significant step in this direction, allowing the platform to compare products and make recommendations—a clear move toward commerce-driven revenue.

The potential Chrome acquisition represents OpenAI's recognition that while having advanced AI technology is valuable, owning the distribution channel is what ultimately determines market dominance. In the digital economy, owning the gateway to the internet may be the ultimate competitive advantage.