They really were the sleeping giant and I think everyone understood that - OpenAI especially, hence their need to scale up hardware as much as physically possible. Google is trying their best to keep their heads down and focus on their lane. It's starting to pay off, but I'm sure they've felt the heat more than once.

>pushing out huge challengers in the space

I thought it's not actually available to anyone? They announce huge challengers, but they don't exactly "push" them out...