Perplexity Pro for Developers: an in-depth review with privacy guidelines

Perplexity is the most interesting of the AI projects to yet appear. Perplexity is unlike almost all the other AI projects in that at its core it is user interface, rather than capabilities. Perplexity is effectively like an iPod of AI. Just as the original iPod offered fewer features and less storage than the MP3 players with which it competed, but simply offered a better interface, so it is with Perplexity.

AI search is Google’s fault

The existence of Perplexity is mostly Google’s fault. Before Google sold its soul to the investors and turned its SERP results into a yard sale covered with huge billboards, there would have been little need of a Perplexity. One could go to Google search for something and get useful results. For more depth, just open up the best-looking references.

Instead, searching for anything on Google for the last five years, basically means getting about two or three good results on the first page, surrounded by about twenty-five ads, above, below, on the side and even in the middle of the SERPS. Worse than useless.

Google Alternatives: Kagi

Our other search tool at Foliovision is Kagi, where we pay about $10/month to search with clean results (no advertising) and the possibility to promote, demote and ban sites. In SERPS where we search regularly, the republishing sites are banned within a few days leaving fairly good results.

For now Kagi results are nothing like the mid-days of Google though, where the results were great and there was not much commercialisation. Kagi has been dependent on either the Bing or Google SERPs, they now claim to have their own independent index Teclis. Despite the promising rhetoric about small publishers, Teclis still includes too much publishing mill and AI content.

Google Alternatives: Brave Search

Brave browser is our primary browser, stepping in for adware/spyware Chrome. So we gave Brave Search a good try and use it sometimes (in private windows). While Brave Search is private, under the hood, it’s rebranded Bing. Not good enough.

How Perplexity changes the Search Game

To return to Perplexity, what the team at Perplexity have done is turn conventional search on its head. Instead of us doing the searching, opening ten URLs, scanning and collating the most useful information, Perplexity Pro opens up thirty SERP results, reads through them. After reading thirty pages, Perplexity’s agent compares what’s there with what is already in the AI model it’s using and then chooses which sources to use and then summarises those results as useful information.

Perplexity is astonishingly accurate. For complex queries, Perplexity is far more useful than Kagi. Kagi’s privacy model is better as Kagi promises to throw away most of the data almost right away and to anonymise the little bit they keep.

Perplexity Limitations

What Perplexity cannot do is code, as it won’t accept uploaded files and it won’t code anything for you. Perplexity is set up to just give you examples and tell you to code it yourself.

That said, you can give Perplexity a small chunk of bad code and ask what’s wrong. Perplexity will look around Stackoverflow, use its internal agent and give you a pretty good assessment as well as some sources to learn more about what it is you want to do.

Why Perplexity is especially useful to developers

So why is Perplexity such a useful tool for developers then?

Because we can simply ask questions about any technical domain or complex task and get an immediate summary of how the device/model works and how to adjust it. Perplexity is like having a full-time research assistant or like reading 1000 textbooks. Perplexity is like a second-brain, except one doesn’t have to do all the scrapbooking, browsing and annotating oneself.

Free Year of Perplexity Pro

Right now it’s the last week of the greatest free Perplexity offer (there were quite a few, some from Revolut, some from mobile phone companies, others from tech clubs) of them all. The offer is the first year of Perplexity Pro for free. And for this one, one needs only hold a Paypal account. Not a US Paypal account but any Paypal account.

It’s a very generous offer. Normally Perplexity Pro goes for $20/month and it’s worth it for knowledge workers. Perplexity’s motivation with this incredible offer is twofold. Perplexity is preparing for an IPO or buyout in the long term. To get the best possible valuation, Perplexity needs paying users. All of the free offers require adding a Payment method to one’s account so all of the free users are counted as paid users. This is trickery of course, as most paid users will go somewhere else.

I do expect retention to be unusually high, not in the usual 2 to 5% after a free trial but closer to 20%.

Perplexity has a few other tricks up its sleeve, with a very invasive personal assistant and a spyware browser Comet. I don’t recommend allowing Perplexity that much penetration into your life. Now is probably the time to talk about caveats with Perplexity’s main service, which will make most people stay far away from the personal assistant and/or browser.

Perplexity and Privacy

Perplexity never forgets so be very careful what you ask.

I’ve had Perplexity editorialise into new queries “With your preference for French cars” or “Your Peugeot” when I had not necessarily explained that we owned a Peugeot. Perplexity proudly knows that I own a Nikon Z9 based on my questions and that I edit with DaVinci Resolve and that I’m an expert WordPress developer. “Your expertise in WordPress means…”

All of that knowledge is fine. But it makes me very happy that I have not asked Perplexity much about medical conditions, certainly not about family matters (I did once ask about a six-year old mountain biker in BC, Crosby Zimmerman: Grok couldn’t find Crosby for me, and Crosby had disappeared from YouTube). Perplexity could guess that we have young mountain bikers at home. I’d stay away from any legal questions as well. Just the question reveals the vulnerability, however useful Perplexity would be in helping solve such issues.

Perplexity and Security

I’d also be very careful about some security questions and topics. Just knowing how your tech stack is set up would very useful to a state actor who wishes to penetrate your network. I’ve been a bit lax in this direction with too many detailed questions about how to de-Google an Android phone and about LineageOS.

My work in WordPress is no secret, nor are my editorial or photographic craft a guild secret.

And so it probably is with your professional work. To be able to get instant answers with detailed references is almost priceless. Pre-AI, it would have cost at least €500 and more like €1200/month to have an intern handy to do these information errands.

Alternatives

Perplexity’s competition like Claude, Grok or Merlin or recently ChatGPT can now search Google and give references for their answers. But like MP3 players, they do it just a bit worse. Grok is slow, the other hide their references or are simply clunky.

Grok has one informational super-power over Perplexity, which is the ability to search X.com for recent threads and posts. But that’s a story for another article.

For quick answers or step-by-step instructions, with proper references, Perplexity is the sauce. If you have Paypal, enjoy Perplexity free.

AI for Mobile Phone Users

All of you miserable iOS users out there struggling with Apple Intelligence can just add the Perplexity app and never think again about how Apple’s empty promises and misleading rhetoric.

As bad as privacy is with Perplexity, the privacy situation with Google is far worse. Android users should prefer Perplexity over Google. To enjoy any remnant of privacy on an Android phone, one should de-Google the phone and make sure to turn off and keep off any AI features which read your email and watch your screen and sort your contacts.