This is entirely a failure of management rather than engineering. The kind of single player AAA titles they were promoting are always going to look better and

This is entirely a failure of management rather than engineering. The kind of single player AAA titles they were promoting are always going to look better and be more responsive on local hardware. They should have leaned into Stadia as a backend for massively multiplayer online games, where they would have the advantage of cheat protection and a subscription revenue model. Instead they pushed for a purchase model that exacerbated all of online gaming's shortcomings while minimizing the advantages. The Stadia infrastructure may yet succeed, but never under Phil Harrison. He should have been sacked years ago.