Burn I wonder if that’s really a problem because in 3 years, if GOogle Cloud becomes a billion dollar company then most wont question its financial importance to Alphabet.
But that also means if it doesn't become profitable, it'll be shut down on short notice. Which is exactly the reason nobody is considering Google Cloud, and going to AWS and Azure instead. Google knows this (they're not stupid after all) and seems to be pulling out of kubernetes development recently.
Google is not pulling out of Kubernetes development. Their contributions have stayed at a very high level and they remain the largest single contributor, although their % of all contributions has declined over time as many more companies have gotten involved.
Thanks for clarification! The TechCrunch article might indeed be click-baity, but OTOH it seems credible to me Google wouldn't be maintaining k8s indefinitely when they've nothing to gain. I understood Google said as much when they were calling on other parties (presumably AWS, Azure) benefitting from k8s more than Google itself to engage in k8s development. Though I'm not sure Azure, and much less AWS, would have a business case for doing so.