The $200 Gateway to Your Digital Soul

An Internal Monologue on Perplexity's Comet Browser

Click. Another tab opens. Click. Another search. Click. Another rabbit hole of information that leads nowhere and everywhere at once.

I've been using the internet for three decades, and I just realized I've been doing it wrong the entire time.

Perplexity launched its first AI-powered web browser, called Comet, marking the startup's latest effort to challenge Google Search as the primary avenue people use to find information online. But here's the kicker: it's available first to subscribers of Perplexity's $200-per-month service. Two hundred dollars. Per month. To browse the web.

Let me paint you a picture of what this looks like in practice. You're reading an article about climate change. Without switching tabs, without opening new windows, you simply ask Comet's AI assistant to book you a flight to Copenhagen for that sustainability conference you've been considering. It comes with a sidebar assistant that can summarize pages, answer questions, and even take actions on the user's behalf (booking hotels, sending emails, or buying products).

The assistant doesn't just search for flights. It knows your preferences from previous interactions. It cross-references your calendar. It probably knows you prefer aisle seats and have a mild anxiety about layovers. It books the flight, sends you a confirmation, and updates your calendar. All while you're still reading about melting glaciers.

This is either the future of human-computer interaction or the most expensive digital leash ever created. I'm honestly not sure which.

OpenAI is reportedly preparing its AI-backed browser, which will embed ChatGPT and autonomous agents within Chromium. So we're about to have multiple AI browsers competing for the privilege of knowing everything about how we consume information, make decisions, and live our digital lives.

Think about what your browser knows about you. Every search. Every click. Every pause before you decide whether to buy something. Every website you visit when you're bored, lonely, curious, or desperate. Now imagine that data being processed by an AI that can act on your behalf.

The brilliant part? You can access the Perplexity assistant from within Comet at any point and ask it to perform tasks on your behalf. It's like having a personal assistant who never sleeps, never forgets, and has access to everything you've ever looked at online.

The terrifying part? It's like having a personal assistant who never sleeps, never forgets, and has access to everything you've ever looked at online.

I keep thinking about the $200 price point. It's not accidental. It's not a number pulled from thin air. It's the precise amount that separates "I'm curious about this technology" from "I'm committed to fundamentally changing how I interact with the internet."

The browser sets Perplexity's AI search engine as the default. It delivers text-based summaries of search results instead of a list of links. No more blue links. No more sifting through ten different websites to piece together an answer. Just... answers. Direct, synthesized, pre-digested information.

Part of me is horrified by this. The messy, chaotic, serendipitous nature of web browsing has been the source of so many unexpected discoveries. Following link after link, stumbling into communities you never knew existed, finding information you didn't know you needed. All of that gets streamlined away in favor of efficiency.

But another part of me is fascinated. One reviewer noted they used Perplexity's new Comet browser to book a restaurant while writing an article, and honestly it's the first time AI has wowed them. When was the last time technology actually wowed you? When did you last feel like you were witnessing the future rather than just consuming another incremental upgrade?

The browser wars are back, but they're not about rendering engines or JavaScript performance anymore. They're about who gets to be the intermediary between you and information. Who gets to decide what you see, how you see it, and what actions you take based on what you've seen.

AI startups believe Google's Chrome is vulnerable to a new wave of intelligent browsers. Chrome became dominant because it was faster and cleaner than Internet Explorer. But speed and cleanliness feel quaint now. The new battleground is intelligence, anticipation, and agency.

$200 per month to have an AI assistant that can book restaurants, send emails, and make purchases on your behalf while you browse. It's either the best deal in technology or the most expensive subscription to your own digital dependency.

I'm still not sure which. But I know I'm curious enough to find out.

Click. Another tab opens. But this time, maybe I won't have to.