They did stay ahead of their competitors. In a lot of ways they still are. In a "making profit from AI" way, they're not. But that's what you hire product people for. They had the SOTA translation system of the entire world for a literal decade and didn't monetize it enough to blow their competition to dust. That's not the fault of researchers, and research shouldn't halt or be redirected to profit as a result. Rather, Google should get some better managers / product people to turn the magic their researchers create into profits.

They aren't ahead even in terms of AI tech now. A lot of those researchers got hired away to other companies, and ChatGPT has been ahead continuously.

They are ahead in terms of AI infra and capacity. Research it's not as easy to tell. They are behind in terms of shipping products. Yes a lot of researchers got hired away, but they still up there in the race