Google had been burned badly in multiple previous launches of ML-based products and their leadership was extremely cautious about moving too quickly. It was convenient for Google that OpenAI acted as a first mover so that Google could enter the field after there was some level of cultural acceptance of the negative behaviors. There's a whole backstory where Noam Shazeer had come up with a bunch of nice innovations and wanted to launch them, but was only able to do so by leaving and launching through his startup- and then returned to Google, negotiating a phenomenal deal (Noam has been at Google for 25 years and has been doing various ML projects for much of that time).
Thanks for the helpful context. Google being risk averse is definitely a common criticism I've heard. I can't think of what previous problematic launches could have been, but ironically all the ones I remember offhand were after the release of Gemini!
