"Pichai’s leadership is why the arrival of ChatGPT can be seen as Google’s “Pearl Harbor moment” — not the beginning of the end but the clarifying moment at which, after a period of costly indecision, it became clear the company had to commit fully to the AI race. Pichai took the decisive step to restructure the company to give more power to the brightest AI mind he had at his disposal, DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis. Lesser CEOs would have seen Hassabis as a threat; Pichai harnessed him as his best asset."

The question is how limiting being in the White House’s crosshairs will prove to be.

"The fact hypocrisy is thick in the air does not make Google’s current complaint less valid. What’s good for Google, in this case at least (and maybe at most), is good for healthy competition across the rest of the AI pack. The company, or ideally companies, that win the browser battle will be richly rewarded — and they should get there through merit, not pre-installation or dark patterns."