Product cancellations are just part of Google's culture. They have been doing it for years, including at times when they had very good financial results. It is not a sign of anything other than Google being Google.
In particular it is the result of two unusual characteristics of Google's culture: work supporting legacy code is valued much less than it is at other companies, and launching a new product is by far the best way to get promoted.
FWIW: The latter is often thought but this isn't really supported by data AFAIK (or at least any data i've ever seen computed on the subject)
As anecdote: My org has historically been one of internal infrastructure, maintenance, fixing apis, etc, and our promo rate is much higher than most orgs that launch products.
> two unusual characteristics of Google's culture: work supporting legacy code is valued much less than it is at other companies, and launching a new product is by far the best way to get promoted.
This has been the case at all companies I ever worked at. I don't think there's a place where supporting legacy code is highly regarded and ensures your promotion.
Yes, people get promoted for launching products, but they don't get un-promoted when the product fails 2y later, which most of them have, including 10O% of moonshots so far.
Moonshots are supposed to be high-risk speculative projects. Failure is the most likely outcome. You cannot expect good people to take a chance working on moonshots if they will be punished when they fail.
In particular it is the result of two unusual characteristics of Google's culture: work supporting legacy code is valued much less than it is at other companies, and launching a new product is by far the best way to get promoted.