Google was using Paxos around 10 years before Raft was invented. See the Chubby paper. There were were a bunch of papers like Paxos Revisited that complained

Google was using Paxos around 10 years before Raft was invented. See the Chubby paper. There were were a bunch of papers like Paxos Revisited that complained about hard Paxos is to understand and implement, which inspired Raft.