On: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a night...

[eru]

Rest assured, Googlers mostly saw the same thing, and asked the same question "what are product managers thinking?".

[pja → eru]

They were probably thinking "How many features do I need to claim responsibility for in order to get that next salary / stock option boost?"

By default feature creep tends to win out over less visible improvements: supporting the latter requires active effort from management.

[eru → pja]

Oh, I was mostly thinking about bystanding Googlers not working on hangouts.

Your description is reasonable for people working on a project. (But even inside hangouts there was dissent. I don't know too much about the specifics, and probably wouldn't be allowed to tell, if I did..)