> "The technology pieces we have are incredible," says one member of Google's robots team. "We just have to commit to a particular direction to go in and focus."

A more positive framing of this would be that they're doing development bottom-up: develop good pieces first, then figure out what to assemble them into later. Given that Google hasn't been in robotics very long, and that their goal is to launch a consumer robot "before 2020", this strategy seems reasonable.