I knew a bit about it at the time (nothing confidential that I remember now), and saw both internal discussions and external media reports about it at the time.

I knew a bit about it at the time (nothing confidential that I remember now), and saw both internal discussions and external media reports about it at the time. Wikipedia continues to document that it did exist. But sure, I don’t think it was very well publicized. I will say that Google has generally been bad at product decisions and execution, such as genuinely understanding what their customers and users want or need and effectively giving that to them in a logistically and commercially viable way, more often than they’ve been good at product decisions and execution. (Engineering quality and technical innovation are completely separate questions, and ones at which Google has historically been excellent.) It’s very possible that better product decisions or better execution could have made Contributor a success.