Why hasn't Google launched a chatbot?

Exactly right. Google is the largest advertising company on the planet, everything else is secondary to their profitability. Search became the means by which they deliver ads, so how do you integrate that into a ChatBot type response.

There are scenarios where this could work. I could see a LLM generating text comparing products in a category and/or providing helpful descriptive information, meanwhile providing links to said products. A problem would be that they would have to bias the text to promote for a paid advertiser over the alternatives. This skew is unappealing and undermines the degree to which the response from the LLM can be trusted.

We are happy to have "free" services in exchange for advertising. Perhaps a new model needs to be determined, however ...