I've never heard or read anyone saying this in the early 2000s. They had publicly stated their contempt of the web earlier, made fools of themselves when they realized their mistake and went all-in on it, and spent the whole decade lagging behind. The closest they had to an online success was Wizzes.

> This is basically what people were saying about Microsoft versus Google and other upstarts in the early 2000s.

They would have been right if Google marquee product was an Office Suite

Google was the AI company before AI companies were a thing. The comparison with Microsoft and IBM are misplaced because they failed to capture new territory; ML/AI is Google's stomping grounds. The criticism that Google is bad at consumer chatbots is true, but that's not where the real future value lays.

But Microsoft seems to be doing fine too ?

Yes Google is the new Microsoft, even Microsoft is still the old Microsoft but OpenAI is not the new Google.

Incredible how the idea of Google being such bad choice has become so entrenched that people prefer the offerings of two companies that might not exist anymore in a few years over Google‘s similar offering.