OpenAI Wants Chrome, and It’s Not Just About the Browser: DOJ Trial Highlights Looming Power Swap Between AI and Search

While the United States Ministry of Justice enters the remedy phase of its antitrust trial against Google, a clear image begins to emerge, that which suggests a spectacular change in the balance of powers within the technological industry.

What is at stake is not only a browser or a search engine, but a control over the very future of the Internet. OPENAI, an artificial intelligence company that has recently accelerated at the launch of Chatgpt, now seems to position itself as the next big research giant, just as Google seeks to become a dominant force in artificial intelligence.

At the heart of this pivot is Chrome, the most used browser in the world. The DoJ argues that the property and integration of Google de Chrome allowed it to illegally alleviate its domination in the research market – competition and the reduction in the choice of users. The government wants to dismantle this structure. One of his most daring proposals is to force Google to completely disintegrate Chrome.

During the testimony of the test this week, Nick Turley, manager of the Openai product for Chatgpt, did not chop the words. When asked if his business would be interested in buying Chrome, he replied with confidence “yes, we would do it, as many other parts would do”. This is a statement that made OPENAI’s broader ambitions clearly clearly made far beyond chatbots and language models.

While the test continues to deliberate if Google must be forced to give up Chrome, Openai already looks at what comes then: transforming the browser into a gateway for research and web experiences fueled by AI. The company, which is deeply in partnership with Microsoft, but is clearly not content to rely solely on the Bing infrastructure, seems to lay the foundations for a new research ecosystem – one that bypasses traditional blue links and rather uses a generative AI to answer questions, recommend content and even act in the name of the user.

Turley told court that Optai had previously asked Google to concede to his research API. An e-mail disclosed during the trial revealed that Optai had argued that such an agreement would allow it to build a much better product. But Google, fearing to lose its advantage in research, rejected the offer.

It is not only a business dispute – it is a signal.

Openai pushes forward to become a research power at the very moment when Google looks at AI to redefine its own future. The roles, in many ways, reversed. Where Google once reigned undisputed in research, Openai is now the one that builds this area. Meanwhile, Google invests massively in the development of AI via its Gemini – Bard – platform – and the integration of AI tools throughout its services.

Last month, Google announced that it would integrate the generative responses of AI directly into traditional research results, a decision that aims to counter the growing influence of First tools like Chatgpt and Perplexity IA. Google is also underway to fill the innovation gap in large languages ​​models, seeking to recover attention in an area where Openai has won both the share of the mind and the market share.

Thanks to Gemini, Google aims to bring AI to Gmail, Docs, Maps and even to seek itself-by turning its services in dynamic platforms where AI includes user needs, interprets more contextually and provides what users want before finishing the strike. He tries to reinvent himself in the OpenAi mold.

In this context, many industry observers now believe that the antitrust probe of the DoJ can mark a central turning point in this transformation.

If Google is forced to go beyond key assets like Chrome or to make its research index accessible to competitors, it will weaken the foundation which supported its domination for two decades. This would create a space for rivals like Openai to not only challenge Google’s supremacy in AI, but also build a rival research empire in their own terms.

This future is not eccentric

Openai has already started to recruit high -level browsers engineers, including former developers of Google Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher, both instrumental in the construction of Chrome at the start. The rumors of the company work on a browser based on chrome, but the possession of chrome would accelerate its strategy, which gives it an installation base in the billions and the almost instantable access to user data on the level of the web – essentially for the training and refining of AI agents.

An “A-SI-ST” chrome, under the control of Openai, would probably make a chatpt in all corners of the navigation experience, acting not only as a research assistant but as a decision-making tool. It would represent the most radical evolution of the browser since its creation – from a passive information portal to an intelligent co -pilot.

However, even with its own AI investments, Google may not be able to stop the momentum. The very antitrust examination he is now faced was triggered by his aggressive movements to protect his research monopoly – Multi -Milliards of dollars deal with Apple, Samsung and others to keep Google as default engine on devices in the world. This strategy is now threatened, as is the Empire is built on it.

If the judge Amit Mehta finally reigns in favor of the remedies of the doj, this would not simply disturb Google’s current activities – it could inaugurate a new paradigm where the lines between the browser, the search engine and the AI ​​assistant are completely blurred. In this future, players who dominate AI could also dominate research, reversing the domination of the decades that Google appreciated.

A new digital power card

Indeed, we are witnessing that many analysts now describe as a compromise of domination. Openai, once a research laboratory, is becoming a research and browser competitor. Google, once King of Search, is fighting to reinvent itself as the AI ​​leader. And the antitrust probe of the doj can be the inflection point which allows or forces this evolution.

If Chrome was sold and had to open or another native company Ai-Native would take over, the history of research on the web would no longer be told in keywords and classification algorithms. Instead, it would be told by invites, answers and AI agents who can interact with the digital world on our behalf.

The future of the Internet may no longer concern the person who has the most links – it can be who owns the smartest assistant. And it is a future that the DOJ trial now contributes to defining.