Yep. I joined Google X Robotics (which became Everyday Robots, which got canceled) just as the org was winding down a big R&D push and moving to product development. Engineers were palpably hurt by their various projects being canceled, and in my opinion they never had a viable product strategy beyond “let’s see if we can find a consumer use for this robot”. This strategy ultimately failed and they canceled the project, let go a bunch of the people, and now the robots are being used for AI research. So the whole shift from R&D to product development was a failure. They could have saved a lot of grief and money if they just continued as an R&D org, and in my opinion they would have left open some important doors which would have really helped with AI research.