ChatGPT is 3 and Google just crashed the party

Long before ChatGPT became a household name, a small group inside Google Search pitched a radical idea: replace the familiar list of blue links with an AI chatbot that could answer people’s questions directly. This was 2021. The proposal was quickly shelved. Not because Google lacked the technology, but because it was unwilling to tamper with the engine that powered nearly $200 billion in yearly revenue.

Today, that hesitation looks like the moment Google let someone else seize its future. OpenAI did exactly what Google chose not to: it put a…