Netflix streams consumable media. Sure, it is nice if it starts playing the movie the moment you click play, but having it buffer a few seconds at the start isn't a complete disaster preventing you to enjoy the evening. And once you are watching, the network can be pretty unreliable as long as on average it can succeed in downloading enough in advance to cover glitches. You can even use a TV to watch Netflix in total comfort, blissfully unaware some of these tale up to seconds to render the screen on the reception of a new frame. So you're watching a frame that was send out by the Netflix edge cache server at your ISP 5 seconds ago, so what?

Gaming is different.

You will have noticed gaming equipment like monitors, keyboards, mice, network-cards, routers, ... all advertising and competing on latency, in the x ms range.

This is because for many games, the reaction speed by which your actions are delivered to the game server and update the game world and that new world-state is delivered to the players, that round trip, is crucial. It is very hard to upgrade your reflexes, and you have no control over what the game server or the ISP/Internet does, but you can shave of crucial milliseconds through equipment choices under your control.

Now imaging getting the most kick-ass gaming PC, but you can only play on it to through the slowest and most unreliable keyboard, mouse and monitor connection (by an order of magnitude) ever, because that PC is across the country from you.

Now Google could in theory move the PC closer to you, like curbside or even in your basement. But the closer to you, the less optimal it becomes for other gamers as it moves further away from them and the business model needs those others to timeshare that PC to make it affordable.

The latency problem is not the same for all games or genres. Competitive FPS or MOBA's will be very sensitive to latency, while e.g. older MMO's or turn based strategy games can be far more forgiving.