Nobody in the gaming industry trusts anyone.
Customers don't trust developers, see "never pre-order anything."
Developers don't trust publishers, "executive meddling via focus groups."
Publishers don't trust each other. The difference is publishers have lawyers so they write legal contracts to fix that.
Google, Did, Not, Produce, The, Goods.
Full-stop.
Their service was light on content and offered terrible value for money.
A subscription, which allowed you access to the entire library of games in stadia, akin to netflix, is a compelling product.
It would probably be better if I plugged it in more often, but it pisses me off so much I usually stick it back in a box once it accepts my password.
Even Netflix mostly funds their own content. A “Netflix for games” would involve Google funding exclusive games to be made for their platform.
Well, the current situation is that stadia is defunct, because their business model doesn't work!
I'm saying that i reckon an alternative business model such as a subscription service for games would've worked, but require much more up front investments. Epic games have managed to attract a large dev following using incentives like grants (in exchange for exclusivity). Google's pockets is much deeper than Epic; obviously, google isn't really ready to invest in the stadia platform or make it succeed commercially - it's likely no more than a technology demonstration, something that someone at google intended to further their careers (like all things cancelled at google).
The branding of google services is highly tarnished by now. If you are a business, you will not purchase any google services, short of the monopoly on advertising.
Xbox Gamepass or Playstation Plus
Or 3rd party via Amazon Luna
Stadia had their own first party games that they canceled rather early - Feb 2021, year and two/three months after launch. The writing was on the wall. Stadia was a failure through and through, and they knew it.
I wouldn't trust a Google product with the same.
Stadia was a bad product, but a lack of trust (combined with a business model which requires trust) is certainly part of it.
I've been buying games on Steam since 2006. The "never pre-order anything" take is overblown, IMO. Or rather, it is the default when you don't have a specific list of brands you trust to deliver (i.e. it's the attitude that a new gamer should start with) - but such list does accumulate over the years.
So, no. Trust does matter, and Google lacks trust specifically on the matter of not abandoning things.
I preorder things all the time and have never been disappointed. Granted I specifically avoided some preorders (Cyberpunk comes to mind) because it was obvious it was gonna be a shot show at launch