Google regrets publishing this paper!
Moreover while the transformers and current LLMs are a leap, the monoculture around them is not necessarily a good thing, defocusing many good researchers from otherwise promising tech.
Finally, cross-polination of ideas is where the magic happens.
I honestly do not see this paper as being in the same magnitude of brilliance as a typical Nobel would be. Not to mention that it barely counts as science (actually it probably does not). Don't get me wrong. It is a huge achievement for both the machine learning research field and for humanity as a whole, but putting along the achievements of Nobel physicists and such feels wrong.
They create immense economic value and increase productivity.
So atm they just sell hype, and not much more.
OpenAi (ClosedAi) saw the potential and demonstrated its impressive and unbelievable capabilities!
If Google never shared the transformer model with the world, we would probably not have what we have today.
The big difference between Google and OpenAI is that Google "had a ton more to lose" so to speak and went forward much more cautiously. See all the hullaballoo they had to deal with e.g. with their "Ethical AI" group and the Timnit Gebru fiasco, as well as cases like where that dim bulb Google employee claimed that LaMDA was sentient. OpenAI, on the other hand, was "full speed ahead" from the get-go.
As a result, many of the top AI researchers left Google. After all, wouldn't you rather work at a place where you could see your work productized as fast as you could build it, rather than at a place where other sizable teams in your company were actively working in an adversarial role to put up roadblocks and vetoes wherever they could?
I still think that the big cos. (Google, MS, Oracle, ...) will win the AI race in the medium/long term as they have a huge momentum behind them, so they didn't really "miss" anything.
ChatGPT is much better than Google Search, though!