The gap between grok and Gemini to Claude and chatgpt suggests that yes it is that hard.

I suspect that Grok has been ironically lobotomized by pressures to correct its political views.

Similarly, I could imagine the Gemini folks working in a significantly more complex corporate climate, with different parts of Google pushing for different capability focuses. They are only lagging behind less than a year, so it isn't too large of a gap yet.

That said, the fact that Anthropic is currently the top dog suggests that talent and execution is incredibly important. A year ago none of my normie friends new them, and when i suggested using Claude looked at me like when I recommend Linux.