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These marketing stunts from Perplexity made me stop using their product. For me, it's an indicator that they don't believe in their product, so there's no reaso

These marketing stunts from Perplexity made me stop using their product. For me, it's an indicator that they don't believe in their product, so there's no reason for me to do it either.

giancarlostoro 1y ago
Are they truly marketing stunts? I mean I guess they could just fork Chromium instead.
- minimaxir 1y ago
  Perplexity made a similar longshot offer for TikTok at the peak of that controversy, so yes it's a stunt: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/18/perplexity-ai-makes-a-bid-to-merge-with-tiktok-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/18/perplexity-ai-makes-a-bid-to...
- firloop 1y ago
  They've already forked Chromium. https://www.perplexity.ai/comet https://www.perplexity.ai/comet
- rvz 1y ago
  Yes they are. They did it with their bid to buy TikTok which went no where. Perplexity already has a browser. At this point, this is complete desperation from them for attention.
spandrew 1y ago
Not me — Perplexity is so much better than Google. This troll bid made me laugh
- nickthegreek 1y ago
  i really enjoy perplexity. i recommend taking advantage of one of the o2 resale deals out there so that its like $7/yr instead of $240 and let the VCs eat the rest. I don’t know of any better ai access deals out there. It’s absurd and unsustainable.
beepbopboopp 1y ago
These are consumer products that are basically commodities to all but the largest power users. If you loved their product than this approach should make you ecstatic as its the only way they'll be able to survive as an independent. OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
Which web search do you prefer over perplexity?
- ZeroCool2u 1y ago
  Kagi is a nice alternative. https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - ebb_earl_co 1y ago
      Source for this? I would be crestfallen because Kagi has been such a good product for me for the past year or so.
      - tossit444 1y ago
        Going to assume this is about their partnership with Yandex for image searching. Quick Google results: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/07/17/kagi/ https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/07/17/kagi/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_kagi_search_engine_directly_funds_yandex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
      - viccis 1y ago
        https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio... tl;dr: It's way overblown. One of their search integration partners is a large Russian company (Yandex).
        sofixa 1y ago
        I don't disagree with the gist of their argument, but the fact that they try to whitewash an actual genocide [1] with "politics" is absurd. 1 - if anyone is confused, the UN convention on genocide explicitly lists taking children of an ethnic group to give them to another in the definition of genocide. Russia is quite openly and blatantly doing this.
Aurornis 1y ago
I've tried to use Perplexity after reading all of the hype, seeing it praised by so many VCs, and seeing it appear on so many different lists of essential AI tools. Yet most of my Perplexity queries have produced poor results. It always feels like they optimized for minimizing latency and producing output that feels good instead of doing actual research. Most of the time it feels like the same quality of results I'd get from skimming the top of the Google search page summaries if I didn't filter out the spammy site. The product could be more useful if it spent several minutes researching, but that would defeat the wow factor that I'm sure their product managers are prioritizing.
- pmart123 1y ago
  I remember when the hype first started around it, it was unusably slow, and produced poor results. Granted, I haven't tried it lately to see if latency improved, but the hype versus product state at the time, really turned me off from the product.
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  Really? I’ve found it to be a fantastic product, and a part of my daily use. It’s reduced my legacy search engine usage significantly. Is there a better product? ChatGPT with web search enabled? I guess Google’s AI is probably good, I just haven’t used Google in a while as I switched to DuckDuckGo.
  - tetris11 1y ago
    Same, it outshines Gemini and ChatGPT and hallucinates far less. The tone is less eager too, making it feel more tolerable as a tool rather than an unpaid assistant
  - scrumper 1y ago
    I second this. Perplexity is the only AI I actually pay for. It absolutely excels at the kind of deep search into narrow domains where expertise is concentrated in forums and specialist sites. Things like mechanical work on obscure classic vehicles, vacuum tube electronics, company tax arcana. It's also very very good at those questions you sometimes wake up with, where something happened in the news six months ago and you think, "Whatever came of that?" Its deep research and Pro modes are great at synthesizing thorough briefings on complex topics too, to get up to speed on a new client or job responsibility for example. It's not a chatbot for me, it's a brilliant, tireless little research minion. As always with any LLM you should double-check its final, specific answers. It does occasionally hallucinate when information simply isn't available. Your research minion is just that - a minion, you have to have the context. It's not a teacher or guru. EDIT: the bottom line is, it came along at exactly the right time for me. Google's search results are pages of ads, and DuckDuckGo insists on showing page after page of content-farm blogspam for the types of topics I search for. It cuts right through all that crap for me.
joshuat 1y ago
My reason is much more petty, but their refusal to allow me to sign-in with either a password+2fa or passkey and instead force me to open my email for a magic link has pushed me away. Don't make using your product annoying.
- nashadelic 1y ago
  Magic links are an order of magnitude safer than passwords, and the majority of regular users will never set up 2FA, so this raises the base safety for all
AbstractH24 1y ago
A year ago it was useful. Now you are reminding me to cancel my subscription because it rarely is better that ChatGPT or Claude Ever since deep thinking came out

These marketing stunts from Perplexity made me stop using their product. For me, it's an indicator that they don't believe in their product, so there's no reason for me to do it either.

giancarlostoro 1y ago

Are they truly marketing stunts? I mean I guess they could just fork Chromium instead.

minimaxir 1y ago
Perplexity made a similar longshot offer for TikTok at the peak of that controversy, so yes it's a stunt: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/18/perplexity-ai-makes-a-bid-to-merge-with-tiktok-us.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/18/perplexity-ai-makes-a-bid-to...
firloop 1y ago
They've already forked Chromium. https://www.perplexity.ai/comet https://www.perplexity.ai/comet
rvz 1y ago
Yes they are. They did it with their bid to buy TikTok which went no where. Perplexity already has a browser. At this point, this is complete desperation from them for attention.

spandrew 1y ago

Not me — Perplexity is so much better than Google. This troll bid made me laugh

nickthegreek 1y ago
i really enjoy perplexity. i recommend taking advantage of one of the o2 resale deals out there so that its like $7/yr instead of $240 and let the VCs eat the rest. I don’t know of any better ai access deals out there. It’s absurd and unsustainable.

beepbopboopp 1y ago

These are consumer products that are basically commodities to all but the largest power users. If you loved their product than this approach should make you ecstatic as its the only way they'll be able to survive as an independent. OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.

koakuma-chan 1y ago

Which web search do you prefer over perplexity?

ZeroCool2u 1y ago
Kagi is a nice alternative. https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ebb_earl_co 1y ago
    Source for this? I would be crestfallen because Kagi has been such a good product for me for the past year or so.
    - tossit444 1y ago
      Going to assume this is about their partnership with Yandex for image searching. Quick Google results: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/07/17/kagi/ https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/07/17/kagi/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_kagi_search_engine_directly_funds_yandex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
    - viccis 1y ago
      https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio... tl;dr: It's way overblown. One of their search integration partners is a large Russian company (Yandex).
      - sofixa 1y ago
        I don't disagree with the gist of their argument, but the fact that they try to whitewash an actual genocide [1] with "politics" is absurd. 1 - if anyone is confused, the UN convention on genocide explicitly lists taking children of an ethnic group to give them to another in the definition of genocide. Russia is quite openly and blatantly doing this.

Aurornis 1y ago

I've tried to use Perplexity after reading all of the hype, seeing it praised by so many VCs, and seeing it appear on so many different lists of essential AI tools. Yet most of my Perplexity queries have produced poor results. It always feels like they optimized for minimizing latency and producing output that feels good instead of doing actual research. Most of the time it feels like the same quality of results I'd get from skimming the top of the Google search page summaries if I didn't filter out the spammy site. The product could be more useful if it spent several minutes researching, but that would defeat the wow factor that I'm sure their product managers are prioritizing.

pmart123 1y ago
I remember when the hype first started around it, it was unusably slow, and produced poor results. Granted, I haven't tried it lately to see if latency improved, but the hype versus product state at the time, really turned me off from the product.
Esophagus4 1y ago
Really? I’ve found it to be a fantastic product, and a part of my daily use. It’s reduced my legacy search engine usage significantly. Is there a better product? ChatGPT with web search enabled? I guess Google’s AI is probably good, I just haven’t used Google in a while as I switched to DuckDuckGo.
- tetris11 1y ago
  Same, it outshines Gemini and ChatGPT and hallucinates far less. The tone is less eager too, making it feel more tolerable as a tool rather than an unpaid assistant
- scrumper 1y ago
  I second this. Perplexity is the only AI I actually pay for. It absolutely excels at the kind of deep search into narrow domains where expertise is concentrated in forums and specialist sites. Things like mechanical work on obscure classic vehicles, vacuum tube electronics, company tax arcana. It's also very very good at those questions you sometimes wake up with, where something happened in the news six months ago and you think, "Whatever came of that?" Its deep research and Pro modes are great at synthesizing thorough briefings on complex topics too, to get up to speed on a new client or job responsibility for example. It's not a chatbot for me, it's a brilliant, tireless little research minion. As always with any LLM you should double-check its final, specific answers. It does occasionally hallucinate when information simply isn't available. Your research minion is just that - a minion, you have to have the context. It's not a teacher or guru. EDIT: the bottom line is, it came along at exactly the right time for me. Google's search results are pages of ads, and DuckDuckGo insists on showing page after page of content-farm blogspam for the types of topics I search for. It cuts right through all that crap for me.

joshuat 1y ago

My reason is much more petty, but their refusal to allow me to sign-in with either a password+2fa or passkey and instead force me to open my email for a magic link has pushed me away. Don't make using your product annoying.

nashadelic 1y ago
Magic links are an order of magnitude safer than passwords, and the majority of regular users will never set up 2FA, so this raises the base safety for all

AbstractH24 1y ago

A year ago it was useful. Now you are reminding me to cancel my subscription because it rarely is better that ChatGPT or Claude Ever since deep thinking came out