Google is only temporarily behind. It will release a decent model in max 6-12 months, and not just Google, everyone will release a model, even open source will have some. OpenAI is enjoying a short window of exclusivity.
I think the barrier to entry here is low. OpenAI is ahead now, but I doubt that lives forever.
Its going to go client side, at the OS level and have like 1% of the mental capacity and be good enough
GPT3 already used almost 1/5th of that figure at 180bn parameters, and PaML uses 500bn.
The point is that it will be ubiquitously client side, and it will happen faster than newer hardware comes out. Current hardware is very limited and slow in getting output from LLMs.
My tiny Alexa puck isn't going to run a 180bn parameter LLM that runs best on 10 graphics cards any time soon, however it can already call a simple API and get a response in only 50ms more. I suspect people will prefer the cloud overhead of 50ms for a better response for a bigger model for a lot of queries.
But who knows at this stage! I guess it could go either way depending on how both hardware and these models advance.
I just assume that in the close future, most people are going to be interacting with LLM's on low-cost devices with limited/varied compute.