I have it on good authority that Bard will be shut down in the next six months if it doesn't show massive adoption. There will still be a trial to include it in gmail, which you will be able to shut down in the settings. But it's a re-run of the Google+ play and once they go down that path the shutdown is pretty much inevitable, the bigger question is how much the Google brand will be damaged before they realize they can't compete.

Nothing but tough choices on their part. They thought they had much more time before releasing it into the wild so now they are competing with a half-baked product.