Google has built a multibillion dollar business on top of "free" users. ChatGPT has more than 400 million weekly active users and this is obviously going to grow. You are overlooking how easily that "free" demand will be monetized as soon as they slap ads on the interface.
"Obviously" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. They have a lot of competition and no killer use case and no IP rights. From the consumer point of view, they're fungible.
That's not even considering the probability that demand could slow as people lose interest.
