Deepseek R1 was a publically-available, MoE model that was getting a ton of attention before llama4. Llama4 didn't get much attention because it wasn't good.
Also, Gemini 2.5 Pro launched a week before Llama 4.
It was Gemini 2.5 Pro that redeemed Google in the eyes of most people as a valid competitor to OpenAI instead of as a joke, so Meta dropping the ball with Llama 4 was extra bad.
