1) I'm not sure what Google did, but with Google TV a device with 1 GB of ram is no longer more than enough. I feel that it needs double the ram to run well. Unfortunately no Google TV to my knowledge has 2 GB or more of ram. Given this, I really doubt the extra new features will work well since the hardware isn't up to par. It probably just has more reasons to lock up and freeze more often.
2) This is probable the only device where Netflix doesn't work well. Nearly every time you start Netflix, it'll fail to connect and it's pretty often when it fails to connect to Netflix when you try to play a movie. For a while even Youtube of all things didn't work well.
3) There are "apps" that are simply bookmarks to web pages.
4) None of the set top Google TV boxes come with a tuner / cable decoder, necessitating a separate box if you want to watch cable or over the air TV; which kills the entire point of it when the cable box has a better experience.
The list just goes on. This is just one really horrible set of products.
Yes, we have installed the updates as they become available.