Assuming that Perplexity doesn’t operate its own search engine and crawler, how would it be able to operate without Google? Google’s search index and its maint

Assuming that Perplexity doesn’t operate its own search engine and crawler, how would it be able to operate without Google? Google’s search index and its maintenance will remain a required functionality for the internet, and it will have to be paid for one way or another. Furthermore, AI will continue to require a corresponding search interface to implement its AI search on top of, and some portion of human users will also still want to directly access it, rather than only through an AI front end.