The merger was April ‘23, GPT-4 was March ‘23 which is too close to be the trigger for the re-org, so it was in response to ChatGPT (GPT-3.5). There was talk of a “code red” around that time (December ‘22).

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/20/23691468/google-ai-deepmi...

https://www.aiwithvibes.com/p/google-issues-code-red-respons...