Let's hope you're right, but you might be underestimating the "$200 per month (robo)engineer can only do it like this, therefore this is the way to do it" factor.
I believe originally it was a name for PTSD, that's an even more curious association. In case it wasn't obvious, tortoise-related puns can be taken too far :)
Pick your poison, as usual, but Patrick Boyle's "How The Japanese Economic Miracle Led to Lost Decades" suggests the fall was entirely of their (Japan's) own making: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=12ddOpt7Hio
I recently concocted a (conspiracy) theory that relicensing of HC projects is a ploy to get IBM (or some other company happy to rain on IBM's parade) to finally make an offer. Mitchell leaving the company features in the theory as well. Basically it seems like since at least 2021 HC leadership and/or investors are exploring exit strategies that will bring in the beeeelions.
Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's freudian, but email existed before Google, so did calendar. Youtube was an acquisition. Maps, well, there are great alternatives now that do not require anal-probe-level surveillance to find an address or a route.
Just publicly fund the services that are useful to people. If "government" (i.e. us) can pay for a square for people to meet at, why not "digital spaces"?
And if someone's thinking "but government will use this data to surveil people!" - this ship has sailed, they have access to everything that's not e2ee, and even that's not guaranteed.
Government is practically the only body that can be expected to follow laws and act with people's best interest in mind. Some governments even do, just need a non-dystopian one...
And yes, there's commercial space in government/local authority-operated places. That's fine, just make sure to boot those that decide to install the equivalent of cameras and microphones on their storefront.
From what I've been told, you need to "change something" in order to get promoted at Google. Doesn't much matter what, as long as it's a visible change, presumably at least marginally improving things.
And that illustrates what releasing half-baked stuff and not caring much about tech debt is all about - visibility. This seems to be true across industries. Not releasing something, even if it's not ready gives impression of not doing enough, not delivering, always being late, etc. Releasing stuff shows you (the manager) are the person who delivers. If it's crap, you'll get even more resources to throw at fixing stuff that's already delivered. And you're the hero again (even if it's "techies" who did 80-hour weeks to make it happen).
This doesn't even break down too much in physical product world. "Deliver" could mean sales, first to the market, we'll add copy&paste in 3.0, and so on...
"researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48168928
https://www.ft.com/content/fba35eca-df3a-4ad6-b42d-eb08eb7c9...
https://archive.is/6VpWy
Spoiler: smartphones, social media, housing.