Wouldn’t it It would be enough for Google to release something as good as ChatGPT-4, for basically free, crushing any competition. Then going back to doing whatever they want ?
they are probably running away from it to avoid a bunch of law suits. Google can't simply read other's websites and sell it as there own content.
No, there is no going back anymore, for many queries, LLMs are superior to search that came before. Google is certainly at an advantage because their traditional search is better than others, so when MSFT & GOOG both try to integrate LLMs with real time information, GOOG still has the upper hand.
They have the upper hand in many many ways, hardware, ability to scale, access to high quality information, that's just to name a few.