They started early, publishing the paper that led to the LLM craze (https://research.google/pubs/attention-is-all-you-need/), and internally testing a model code named LaMDA (remember this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-...?) but by the time they released it as Gemini, it was significantly under performing competitors, and became a bit of a laghing stock. (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o)

That was probably their low, and they've been catching up especially as the field has plateaued. They're making contracts to host LLM services, so they don't seem to be giving up, and the longer the plateau lasts, the less they'll be behind, unless they are slow to migrate to whatever the next step is.