They suffer from "scared to release an imperfect product that damages PR"-itis.
They are so scared that an AI with Google branding might say something inappropriate, that they prefer to release nothing at all.
For context, they put a lot of engineering effort into making sure "Okay Google" for the voice assistant couldn't be modded to "Yo Dick" or something else off-brand, simply because they were worried about media backlash.
Nobody knows FB owns Instagram.
Nobody is going to care if Google releases a ChatGPT bot on a different website.
It would be a 'you can use all google internal code and infrastructure, for free, as long as you don't use google branding and don't use our user data' deal.
The companies would have the benefits of google tech, without being tied down by internal politics, procedures, risk management, etc.
They could afford to do things like just release a product to the world rather than have a legal and PR team go over every detail for every law in every country worldwide as part of a 6 month long review process.
I might bootstrap revenue without much hiring, so that business success means the team does better financially than the sure-thing FIRE if they'd just taken a FAANG job and grinded promotions.
This business giving away 80% equity would lean on the value of IP, and on knowing how to be very effective with solo/small teams -- not 'scale' in the sense of trying to herd hundreds of software and product and business people. (This is another thing that big orgs can have trouble doing, and so sometimes do insulated spinoffs/units instead, just to unburden people.)
[0] https://area120.google.com/
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/technical-interview-platfo...
The closest Google had to it was Area 120, which has also been abandoned?
That might have been true at some point - but a combination of their extremely loud rebranding of both to Meta, and the media constantly saying 'Instagram, which is owned by FB' or words to that effect has changed it. Even my elderly parents are aware Instagram is owned by FB / Meta.
They're pretty upfront with it... It says "By Meta" on the launch screen
Even my non tech friends know.
More things that don't work:
1. Delete the last screenshot.
2. Set timezone to est
3. Turn on hotspot
4. Turn on nearby sharw
However, it should at least just ask for permission the first time you try to do that.