They have this. But it's internal. But with 200,000 employees, that's a plenty big enough pool of testers.
I'm not saying I'm ready to replace Google by ChatGPT or Bing AI. I'm saying this is a huge step in the right direction overall for human-computer interaction, and Google has been sleeping at the wheel for this one.
Google has a legacy moat but they aren’t the best by a noticeable amount anymore.
I have since moved to Ecosia a year or two ago as I found the results were very similar and have no issue with it.
Does make me sad the traffic page is gone: https://instruments.digital/duckduckgo-traffic-archive/
Currently they have a "caretaker CEO".
Google was sitting on a massive cash cow, so they appointed someone who would just keep it ticking over.
In the face of an existential threat, like ChatGPT, they need someone who can actually drive innovation. Not innovate themselves, nobody expects a CEO to do that, just create a culture which has a hope in hell of rising to fend off challenges to the empire.
They don't have this.
That have a CEO who is only capable in "good times" ... along with most of the company.
Faced with sufficient adversity, they will need a CEO who can succeed in the face of adversity.
Most of those folks (judging by my own friends) had very low expectations which ChatGPT blew out of the water. When they read "Microsoft search with ChatGPT" they are looking for integration of at least somewhat known quantity into a not so great (perception-wise) search. Win-win. If that bot stumbles in demo, no big deal. They already saw 100 examples, 95 good and 5 goofy; adding one to either bucket is not critical.
Google AI bot is an unknown quantity. Google search is (again, just perception wise) the leader in the search. When the bot stumbles it is a big red flag.
I really do not know why Google rushed it out instead of coming up with a friendly "hey, play with our toy first" approach. With this approach the bot can be iterated and made cool (hey, we can pair it with a stable diffusion-like painter for kids; or a lullaby composer; whaterver). Once cool, then it is "hey, you know, you can start leveraging it from the google search tomorrow". Screwups like this really make me think Google's rot is very broad. My 2c.