Perplexity’s Comet
Perplexity has been one of my favorite AI tools for a long time. It’s prominently bookmarked in Chrome on all of my computers; I use their extension, I have their Mac and Windows apps installed, and it occupies the spot directly under my thumb on the home screen of my phone. For all practical purposes, it has replaced Google as the de facto search engine on all of my devices. It won’t, however, replace Chrome as my browser anytime soon, but I’ll cover that later.
Back to the main topic: Comet -the “browser” that Perplexity launched last month. I was planning on writing a somewhat critical review of how Comet is an example of revenue-led product development (negative connotation), but I’m having trouble doing that because: 1. I enjoy using Comet so much, 2. I love Perplexity’s products, and 3. Their growth strategy has -for quite a while, perhaps always -included the concept of acquiring users at the gateway of their interaction with the web -a browser -and the inevitable reality that our future interactions with all of the content out there will be assisted by AI.
My plan here isn’t to provide a comprehensive list of features and tell you ALL about it, because that’s not what I do… Rather, I’m going to provide a highly opinionated product-centric view (my view) highlighting a few things that I like/dislike. At the outset, let me say that I applaud the entire team @Perplexity for pushing the envelope in a market that’s been monopolized and largely stagnant -web browsers -for a long time. Moreover, just about everything that Perplexity deploys is nothing short of magic, and continues to serve as a beacon of product vision and insight that, myself, and I’m sure many others, follow.
What's It For?
One of the first questions that I had was:
“Tell me how Comet is different than the Perplexity desktop application. Give me some representative use-cases for both. Overall, I'd like to better understand the differences between them so that I can optimize my use of each.”
I wasn’t enamored with Perplexity’s initial response so I prompted again with
“I'm not buying it. That's very hand-wavy and theoretical. Tell me when and why it would be better for me to use one versus another.”
Here’s what I got back:
Is it Agentic?
Not yet. Someone who’s paid to write or doesn’t know what they’re talking about might say that it is. Sure, if you connect it to your Google account, it can summarize a chain of emails, check your calendar, schedule events, etc. But, IMO, their privacy policy is no bueno and precludes me from connecting it to any accounts that I care about.
More on their Privacy Policy
By Perplexity's admission, your information may be disclosed to their vendors, such as: FactSet, Crunchbase, Kruze (no idea why), Opal, Stripe, Inteleous, and others. Additionally, they’ll share it with a future acquirer, which harkens me back to frantically deleting my data on 23andMe on an otherwise mellow night not that long ago.
Finally, they may share it with the “Company Group,” affiliates, which Perplexity itself cites as including “management and product leads” Tyler Tate and Andy Chung. No offense Tyler -you seem chill and we probably have a lot in common but I’m not comfortable with grotesque information asymmetries. Andy, you seem cool too, nice work on Read.cv, but same thing applies.
Back to Comet’s agentic-ness: yeah, it can summarize what’s in a bunch of browser tabs; it can, of course, research stuff while I pet my dog and wait; but, really, that’s an assist. It isn’t deploying pipelines, creating new inference models, and doing UAT on my app (or queuing Devin.AI to fix bugs found during UAT) while I go fishing. So, agentic? Not quite.
Some Cool Features
I really like the browser tabs. This feature adds a layer of convenience and usability that’s always been missing from their web and desktop applications. I can’t tell you how often I find that I have multiple Perplexity sessions open in Chrome at the same time, and this solves that use-case. It’s also kinda nice to have Perplexity outside of Chrome so that I can separate my concerns: research (Perplexity & Claude) and content creation (GDrive, Colab, Deepnote, etc.). Of course, their desktop app provides the same benefit albeit without tabs.
Another feature that I appreciate is the context-aware side-panel assistant. It provides a convenient method for following-up on details from the primary response pane in Comet; in a nutshell, it’s a bit like a supercharged version of content tooltips in Wikipedia. The interaction design is pretty much identical to Type.AI, but I don’t know whether or not the Type.AI team was the first to build it this way -I simply saw it for the first time in their app. The only disadvantage of the side-panel assistant is that it can be challenging to find previous responses. Thus, I tend to think of it as a kind of scratch pad.
Not So Cool Tactics
Continuing on with my complement sandwich approach: I can’t stand the Microsoft-esque intrusion tactics in Comet. In the same way that Microsoft dupes users into changing their default browser, signing up for cloud storage, enabling data backup, trialing MS Office 365, and purchasing all of the other garbage that they create and promote with every OS version released, Comet prompted me to change my default browser on installation.
Guys, I’m never gonna do it, and asking me to do so (with the default value being checked) crushes rapport and trust.
What’s even more annoying is that there’s a similar everlasting banner just above the prompt input area on every new tab that you open; there’s definitely some duplicity associated with its positioning because there’s a decent chance that with a large enough number of uses of the application, I will accidentally click on the “Set Comet as default” button.
My guess is that including this in the application turned the stomach of every engineer that touched it, and that it was mandated by someone with more voice than wits, or a much stronger desire for adoption than building brilliant products.
Similarly, I’m pretty burnt out on the “Invite your team” prompt.
More on Chrome
It isn't going away anytime soon (excepting any unforeseen results of the Justice Department’s pursuit of a forced divestiture of Chrome by Alphabet). Therefore, coercing or deceiving people into changing their default browser is an effort in futility because most people are going to continue using it on a daily basis. If they inadvertently change their default browser, they'll revert the changes... unless they can't figure out how to do it, in which case they'll ask Perplexity, and then figure it out.
Why won't Chrome be easily supplanted?... Because it has features and functionality applicable to myriad use-cases by many different personas spanning a breadth of industries and markets.
For example, Chrome has Dev Tools and Google Analytics, which are invaluable to Frontend Engineers, Product Managers, and everybody in the Ad-Tech business. Chrome provides access to Google’s productivity suite including: Drive, GMail, Calendar, Meet, Gemini (not so much), etc. Of course, people also use it to access commonly used applications like Maps, YouTube, Finance, Chat, Contacts, Forms, Tab Groups, Bookmarks, and thousands of utilitarian extensions.
My point is that Chrome will remain relevant and necessary for a long time (once again, excepting unforeseen events). Currently, Comet:Chrome is NOT, e.g., Cursor:VSCode, nor should it be. When you get to that point, you’ll know it; and maybe then it’ll be appropriate to prompt users for a browser change. Having said that, it wouldn’t make sense to replicate all (or most of) Alphabet’s products; rather, continue developing the functionality that provides unique and differentiated value to your users.
One final point: I love the retro-themed installation walk-through.
Note: this article contains grammatical and spelling errors, redundancy, “it’s” instead of “its,” and many other defects. It is imperfect because it was written and edited by an imperfect human (me) who would rather convey undiluted opinions with unique & flawed language than facts and dispassionate statements delivered with perfect prose.