What non-technical users know is “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, and I was left hanging. This has happened multiple times so I no longer want to try anything new they release”.

Had the projects been open-sourced, at least some of them would have been picked up by others and continued so non-technical users would know “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, then someone continued it and I’m still using it to this day. I’m happy to try this new Google thing, because even if they abandon it I won’t be left in the cold”.