Could they actually do that? Or more importantly, could the average user - not someone next door to the datacenter - get that kind of performance?

Internet performance in Europe has improved dramatically over the past year and a half. Average fixed line download speeds have increased by more than half (+51.9 percent), from 68 Megabits per second (Mbps) in March 2020 to 103.3 Mbps in June 2021.

they put themselves in a position where they were stuck acting like a psudo-console-platform thing needing to get developers to support thier platform

Getting the technology done even better means that Chromebooks and Androids (or even the browser) could be heavyweight gaming machines -- and thereby increasing those audiences.

As those audiences grow (and they're already big), having better hardware streamlined into Stadia means they immediately have insane distribution power. If you consider mobile gaming dominance in Asia, and the ability to release triple-A games immediately to a billion devices worldwide, that creates huge leverage over iOS.

Then as you said, GCP. I think someone with an idea and roadmap was there, but FAANG incentive programs don't reward people focused on the long game.

on the whole I feel like they were to focused on potential vs. offering something desirable right away