Well of course they are. Google knows this game pretty well at this point. They're playing for second intentionally. Let ChatGPT take the lumps for being the first to try and scale and whether they make it or not is irrelevant because Google can take a fair chunk of the market with relative ease. No reason for them to rush in.

I'd be extremely surprised if Google got honestly caught unawares. Perhaps they were surprised by how quickly ChatGPT grew, but I have to imagine they're pretty well positioned to handle this.

But, this is a very promising sign. ChatGPT is one tool and it shows that, if done right, a small company can still put some pressure on the larger companies. Hopefully we see a few more like ChatGPT in the next 4-5 years to add some diversity to the tech markets.