I'm not sure why, exactly. But I don't pay any attention to news like this from Google. I don't know if there's some marketing which has me writing them off or if it's something else.

What I do know is that the Gemini integration into sheets is surprisingly incapable of performing basic tasks. This is where I expect Google to really shine. I expected Sheets + Gemini to be magical like Google Photos was. I hardly try anymore besides some basic math questions when I don't feel like inputting the formula myself.

The other thing I know is Google's propensity to sunset products. For many things, it's not a huge deal. And it may not be for this. But, why? When there are alternatives - both open and closed.

k8sification of AI was always inevitable, if only as a form of salary justification.

Question: What is Google's track record for where their open source releases end up over time?

Genuinely not knowledgeable here

I can understand why it was chosen, but I'm not a fan of writing a bunch of yaml.

I'd evaluated both Google's Agent Substrate (that underlies Ax) and their Scion project. I really enjoy how Scion operates with existing tools really well. Ax/Agent Substrate is much more a greenfield independent effort, it's own thing.

I think Scion has so much more mature a disosition: you could write OpenCode plugins that enhance the runner, and use that locally, and use it in Scion. With Ax/Agent Substrate, you are opting in to a pretty huge stack that is just Agent Substrate, that is their runners, their harness, their substrate. I do think their actor model is pretty neat! It's neat having the agent have such primacy! But it feels so much less integrative, is such it's own thing. Scion, to me, is much more interesting an effort, that similarly helps scale out agentic workloads.

https://github.com/googlecloudplatform/scion

The reality with releases like this is that I'm 90% sure most Google bigwigs have never heard of it, and it's misleading to label it as "Google's" in the title.

Yes, it was developed by Google employees, that does not imply it has the full backing of Google, or Deepmind, or GCP. Notably, the website doesn't seem to claim this either.

Everyone and their mother are vibe coding their own solutions like this, all the time.