Google's AI is hamstrung by a culture of safetyisim, by that I mean going beyond what we can all recognise as safe limits to protect the user from imaginary ephemeral things like cultural harms.
So maximal safety at all costs is in itself a cost. They can spend billions on AI but that spend is down the toilet if the user bounces because the AI's persona is a relentless politically correct scold.
People forgot, but Google had their own internal version of ChatGPT before OpenAI. But they never even intended to launch it. If OpenAI hadn't just thrown the technology out there for everyone to see, Google would probably still be sitting on it. Google does tons of original stuff, but they haven't released any original product in more than a decade. All they do now is play catch-up once they see people actually like something.
There's also the major problem of people expecting Google to be right when it tells them something but OpenAI had no starting reputation so it was okay to say "be aware it might be wrong sometimes"