There is also the issue of accuracy. When they are trying to give you a webpage, the page may or may not be relevant or accurate, but it is someone else’s content. There isn’t any responsibility on their part to be correct. But if they are generating the answers, suddenly they are responsible for their validity. They might avoid legal culpability (maybe), but enough bad stories of people relying on the bot, not double checking the info, and getting screwed could tarnish google’s reputation. If chatGPT weren’t being used as a toy, being dismissed as “just a language model” whenever it generates harmful bullshit they is blatantly false, it could do a ton of harm. If google had a chat bot used in any official capacity, people would either take it much more seriously or they would have to essentially ignore it.

People rely on google,their AI assistant has to be much more accurate than chatGPT for it not to jeopardize that.