I think both can be true. Google has a history of annoying churn while still being good enough (or just … being large enough) that switching to competitors is still too high a cost for most.

For example, their "chat" app has churned 3? 4? times now? Their assistant app has churned from whatever the OG assistant was to now Gemini. Wave churned to "+" in the social category, and that's dead now.

The default placement in Android probably helps a lot, or other things, like forced signups into adjacent products (e.g., like + was doing for a while).