Perplexity is rapidly emerging as a strong contender in the AI search space, with CEO and co-founder Aravind Srinivas revealing the platform processed 780 million queries in May alone — a figure growing at 20% month over month. Speaking at the Bloomberg Tech event in San Francisco, Srinivas projected that Perplexity is on track to handle 1 billion queries per week within a year, totaling roughly 52 billion annually.

Despite the massive growth, Perplexity still operates on a much smaller scale compared to Google, which processes around 98 billion searches weekly. However, Srinivas believes Perplexity is moving in a direction traditional search engines can’t follow.

He criticized Google’s inconsistent branding and rollout of AI-powered search tools, noting that “in 2023, it was Search Generative Experience, in 2024 it became AI Overview, and now it’s AI Mode — yet users still haven’t seen a tangible product.”

Srinivas argued that Google’s dependence on its ad revenue prevents it from fully embracing AI-first search experiences. “They need that ad money to fund R&D for Gemini,” he said, implying that innovation takes a back seat to monetization.

He also addressed the controversial issue of AI citation links reducing traffic to publishers. Unlike Google, he claimed, Perplexity is transparent about the reduced referral traffic: “We’re not pretending traffic will remain the same. We’ve been open about it from the start.”

Looking ahead, Perplexity is working on Comet, a next-gen tool that blends browsing, information retrieval, and action into a single experience. Srinivas described it as more than a browser — a “cognitive operating system” where one prompt can handle what previously took multiple searches or an entire session.

“Answers are four to five searches in one. Actions mimic a full browsing session,” Srinivas said, highlighting how Comet aims to reimagine how users interact with the internet.

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News Source: SearchEngineLand.com