Perplexity & Comet: The Search Engine That Ate Search

Perplexity is the AI company that built the search engine Google should have built. Type a question, get a synthesized answer with citations. No SEO spam, no ten ads, no scrolling past content farms. It's how search should always have worked.

By 2026 they're a multi-billion-dollar company with tens of millions of users, and they've shipped Comet — an AI-first browser that pre-loads research and proactively summarizes the web for you.

Why Perplexity won AI search

Three product decisions that mattered:

1. Citations as a first-class UI element. Every claim links to a source you can verify. This is Perplexity's killer feature — it's not asking you to trust the AI, it's giving you the receipts.
2. Follow-up questions surfaced inline. The interface encourages you to keep researching, not just take the first answer.
3. Multiple model selection. Pro users can choose Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, Grok, or Sonar (Perplexity's own model) per query.

How it works

Perplexity does real-time web search, retrieves the top-N most relevant pages, summarizes with a chosen LLM, and presents the synthesized answer with inline citations. Behind the scenes it's RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), but the UX is just "ask, get answer."

Comet, the AI browser

Comet is Perplexity's Chromium-based browser, launched mid-2025. The pitch: browse the web with an AI agent that pre-fetches context, summarizes pages as you visit them, and can take actions on your behalf (book travel, fill forms, compare products).

Notable features: per-tab AI context, a sidebar that can read the current page, voice-controlled browsing, ad-free reading mode powered by Perplexity's summarization. We've moved most research browsing to Comet at djEnterprises.

Perplexity Labs

Labs is Perplexity Pro's project mode — multi-step research that returns full reports, slide decks, or spreadsheets. We use it for competitive landscape research, market sizing, and technical deep-dives that would take hours of manual work.

Our research workflow at djEnterprises

For any consulting or content task:

1. Start in Perplexity to map the landscape, identify primary sources
2. Switch to Claude for synthesis and writing
3. Verify specific facts against citations Perplexity surfaced
4. Loop back to Perplexity for follow-up questions as needed

Perplexity Pro ($20/mo) is one of the highest-ROI subscriptions we maintain. The time savings on research alone pay for it weekly.