Why would Google announce a software release, without releasing it? There are many answers to that question, but "because it works as advertised" is not one of them.

I didn't even bother reading their announcement once I saw an HN comment pointing out that nobody can use the thing yet.

It's an LLM. If it works like they say, let me talk to it and see for myself. Otherwise, it's pretty obvious why they don't want me to do that...