OpenAI has pretty much the "best" model and first mover advantage. They can lose the latter, and might struggle to keep the former.
There was literally no one at the level of Google when it came out. I still remember Infoseek and Yahoo, both were garbage compared to Goog.
I know they aren't doing their best right now, but there is no need to rewrite history. Google was always superior to their search competitors, which is why it is so sad to see their current situation.
At that time, google was one big search bar and 10 links.
It was fast, had no ads. Until IPO, they didn’t want to do ads.
Now it’s just ads on the top links.
Google is absolutely vulnerable, if someone comes up with a better search engine.