Color me, well, any color really, just not surprised. A poorly conceived and even worse executed concept which aimed at no demographic known to the industry and still somehow sported some unappealing pricing and zero exclusive incentive for purchase and ownership. Stadia was a disaster when announced, was still a disaster when it launched, and has continued to be a disaster post-launch. Let talented developers spend their time and effort on real projects. This smells almost like Nokia N-Gage all over again.

Stadia was dead on arrival lol, but this news really isn't going to be news for anyone I wager, stadia was yet another thing aimed at the casual player but required a ton of up front investment as well as having a very non casual data connection and desire to play AAA games.

Casuals wouldn't buy into it because they don't pay money for games when stuff like Wild Rift / Genshin are totally free and the more core gamers wouldn't buy into it because they'll already have installed dedicated hardware and the know how that Google are a bad investment when it comes to wacky new ideas.

Nope, they haven't gotten even the time to produce their first games.

Gylt is a fine game, which needs to see a bigger audience.

The videogame market is not easy. Apple, Amazon, and Google are not entertainment companies, and because this has a hard transition to gaming space. A Netflix, A Hbo, or an entertainment company maybe will more dangerous than tech-rich companies for Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Games is not tech branch, they use a tech branch, but games are all about entertainment.

What really surprises me is what this indicates about Google.
MS had tons of money they were willing to lose when they fully committed to their long term Xbox plan and they didn't run away from it because they obviously had a plan.
Google is similarly a mega corporation that has tons of money. You would think they wouldn't mind losing money on these studios knowing what they could achieve in the future. To me, this is an indication that they had no long term plan. Either that or the overlords Alphabet got involved and told them to stop?

Who could guess... but there are still people (don`t remember who was listing it recently) who list Google as a major competitor to make PS5 life hard.

Even google wanted to distance themselves from the thoughts of the Stadia creative director lol

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-10-23-google-distances-itself-from-stadia-creative-director-alex-hutchinson

You know that they only said it first because there was backlash and second because a major source of revenue for Google is showing content for which they have no legal rights including streaming.

Yeah, they are 3rd-party, Google did not release any 1st-party so far, which makes this decision even more mind-boggling.