This is a great example of why you can never trust PR statements. They outright lie. We're not working on X. We won't shut down Y. Bald faced lies.
Edit: Missed that they're doing refunds. That part's good.
EDIT2: Why I'm calling it a lie: These decisions are not made on a whim. They're made months if not years in advance. A public company making public statements about how you're not shutting something down while you're internally mapping out the shutdown process... that's a lie.
As a rule, with corporations, official denials can be thought of as unofficial confirmations. Occasionally this is not true, but for the most part they wouldn't be responding unless the issue was credible and at least a few parties had strong reason to believe whatever it is they're denying.
That's a leadership problem, not a rogue intern problem.
And I'm sure some Google Shareholders will be grumbling about it too, since this represents a non-trivial loss of revenue thanks to the (IMO appropriate) refunds, since it represents a material change in the value of stocks purchased between 60 days ago and today.
That remains a lie by incompetence. Just because Google can't be bothered get their product and PR people on the same page doesn't excuse the entity named Google from making misleading statements.
Or even more likely, management changes their mind.
It is obvious that Google is battening the hatches for a recession. Economic conditions looks worse than just a few months ago. They’ve already reduced their Area 120 investments. This makes sense to cut as well.
That's still a lie from whichever individual or group of individuals you consider to have agency over the matter. Like sure, maybe the individual who physically typed the tweet had little or no agency, but it's still reasonable to call it a lie when the responsible agent was deliberately making a false statement.
Is it even in the realm of possibility that Google, of all companies, has an intern with zero insight into the long term strategy manage the twitter account AND make definitive public statements?
Edit: Missed that they're doing refunds. That part's good.
EDIT2: Why I'm calling it a lie: These decisions are not made on a whim. They're made months if not years in advance. A public company making public statements about how you're not shutting something down while you're internally mapping out the shutdown process... that's a lie.