Google ad monopoly ruling's surprise winner

OpenAI wasn't mentioned once in a judge's 115-page decision against Google over its dominance of the online ad market—but the ChatGPT maker stands as a key beneficiary of this legal conflict. The rise of AI is threatening the heart of Google's search business at the same moment that the government is pressing its most sustained challenge to Big Tech power in nearly 30 years. That could open the path for a once-in-a-generation power transition in tech, with AI upstarts like OpenAI and Anthropic best positioned to seize the initiative. In previous eras of platform transition in the tech world, massive and lengthy government antitrust lawsuits distracted and hobbled industry leaders at key moments, giving new companies and industries breathing room to gain footholds and grow. It happened in the 1970s and early 1980s, when then-dominant IBM fought a grueling court battle with the U.S. while the new personal computer industry began to take off. More recently, it happened in the late 1990s, when Microsoft dueled the government in court over its dominance of the browser market, while a tiny new startup called Google began to win over web users. Now it's Google's turn in the docket.