New Delhi, June 25 -- NEW YORK - For most of the last two decades, Verizon Communications served the Dow Jones Industrial Average as ballast, the steady dividend payer whose share price barely moved the needle, included because an index meant to represent American business needed a phone company in it. On Monday it will be gone. In its place comes Alphabet Inc., the parent of Google, and the benchmark that ordinary investors still treat as shorthand for the market will lean into the artificial intelligence trade more heavily than at any point in its history. The timing is what makes it interesting.

S&P Dow Jones Indices said the switch takes effect before the opening bell on June 29. Alphabet's Class A shares, which trade under the ticke...