Google built a ChatGPT-style chatbot called LMChat in late 2021 but withheld it over concerns it would disrupt its search business, according to Thibault "Tibo" Sottiaux, who worked on the project at DeepMind and now works at OpenAI. Sottiaux shared on social media that Google did not want anything that could interfere with its core operations. Google introduced the Transformer architecture in 2017, laying groundwork for modern AI chatbots, and developed advanced models like LaMDA and PaLM, but these were mostly used internally due to accuracy and safety concerns. Meanwhile, OpenAI's ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months and now has 1 billion monthly users as of August 2026. Google's Gemini has 950 million users, reflecting intense AI competition.