Thibault Sottiaux says Google withheld LMChat over search concerns
Turns out, Google built a ChatGPT-style chatbot called LMChat back in late 2021, but kept it under wraps because it worried it would mess with its search business.
Thibault "Tibo" Sottiaux, who worked on the project at DeepMind and now works at OpenAI, shared this on social media, saying Google didn't want anything that could disrupt its core operations.
ChatGPT 1B monthly, Gemini 950 million users
Google actually laid the groundwork for modern AI chatbots by introducing the Transformer architecture in 2017.
Even though it developed advanced models like LaMDA and PaLM, these were mostly used internally due to concerns about accuracy and safety.
Meanwhile, OpenAI's ChatGPT took off fast, hitting 100 million users in just two months, and now has 1 billion monthly users as of August 2026.
Google's Gemini is close behind with 950 million users, showing just how fierce the AI competition has become.