There is a large difference between battle-tested tech maintained by a properly staffed team and a proof of concept built by someone in their spare time.
The title certainly made me think that it was the former, even though it's the latter.
Just because you don't like doesn't mean it's not built and supported by a large team following some VP or PM vision. Boondoggles cost a lot of resources.
Perhaps I have a different definition of "maintained" than Google does. For me, it means that it's not just online, but also has bugs regularly fixed and features added.
Most Google services (off the top of my head: Voice, Talk, Reminders) seem to reach v1 and then stop dead in their tracks. They're online, but that's it. Thousands of people request fixes or features, and they go completely unheard.
Google employees on HN have confirmed this, saying that the company rewards new products that drive ads, but not the work involved in improving and maintaining existing products. That explains why Google's released the following products for messaging, and none has been amazing: Talk, Hangouts, Voice, Wave, Allo, Hangouts Chat, and Messages/RCS.
Most of these overlapped at some point, and if you've used any of them, you wouldn't describe them as "maintained". They're more like "abandoned without publicly announcing anything".
If there's a VP or PM vision anywhere at Google that lasts for more than a year, I'd love to know what it is. It seems like a company with a thousand committees and no real creative leadership.
According to Googlers, much of the battle tested tech Google's critical systems run on is not maintained by a staffed team. Stuff that works well enough to not scare a VP and isn't a
10x moonshot doesn't get funding.
The title certainly made me think that it was the former, even though it's the latter.