Wow, that's a misleading headline!
As the actual story says, it's more like "Google has had this technology for years, but hasn't released it in this form yet".
Nothing was "shut down".
"Two Google engineers built a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot years ago, but execs reportedly shut it down due to safety concerns"
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-ai-chatbot-chatgpt-years-ago-execs-shut-down-report-2023-3