I'd be a little scared of paying for something in the Google incubator, knowing how they cull stuff that isn't popular. But maybe it'll be successful and go into the bundle.
If Tables is just it’s own thing, not related to search, GSuite, GCP or ads then it’s already dead. At some level it must suck to know that you’ve created a culture where people don’t even care to try out your new fancy gizmo, because they expect you to abandon to quickly it’s simply not worth investing you time in. Or does Google not know that how they’re perceived?
I suspect if it were to ever emerge from the “internal incubator” Area 120 is described as, it would become a GSuite feature.
> Or does Google not know that how they’re perceived?
I think Google knows that people in certain circles talking nothing but that view. They probably also have real stats on how their experiments are picked up and used, and I suspect they aren't at all what the people who think that the perception you refer to do instead public consciousness would predict.
It has to depend a lot on what type of product/service it is, too. For anything consumer facing, I imagine they don't see this effect harming take-up at all. It probably doesn't affect businesses looking to take-up the more established services like GSuite, but I have a really hard time believing that tech-savvy businesses are looking at any new APIs or services within GCP without considering what their lifetime will be.
To my knowledge, nothing majorly successful or long-term supported has ever come out of Area 120.
By lived I do mean no changes to end user for the absorption into another team.
Instead try evaluating the success of Area 120 by the number of Google staff members who have had their "incredible journey" itch scratched and then returned to a product or infrastructure team at Google when their Area 120 project is EOL'ed. From a corporate perspective, it's worth spending some money on throw-away projects to retain staff who might otherwise quit to pursue an actual startup.