Of course those articles were written with the goal of getting people to read it so it's not like they were grounded in reality.

I'm not sure how that connects to the question of whether it was promoted outside of developer circles.

"If you followed the news at the time there was a ton of coverage in mainstream media with bold claims about how society was going to be transformed" You cannot control what the media decides to hype their purposes. It was not as if Google itself made those same claims - that wouldn't be confirmation that the goal of the product was to transform the lives of every consumer. If they were throwing a bunch of ideas around to see what sticks that is a far cry from a purportedly failed "massive consumer push"