For people who don't get this: Google has insane internal power struggles and siloing that lead to all manner of dumb inconsistent behavior across google. It would not be unlike google for the "Play team" to have their hand in some other internal AI (or be anti-AI) and therefore carry a degree of hostilitly towards gemini.

That's what happens when the person in charge of both doesn't enforce alignment. You can't leave orgs to their own devices.

I always wonder how much societal progress has been thwarted by internal warring factions like this.

I wonder how much societal progress has been thwarted by external warring factions, i.e. actual wars