"What we decided to do instead was have a living laboratory for a very public experiment. Is it messy? Sure. And are there are things that you couldn't predict? Absolutely. But there is all of this feedback that you get from these Explorers and these use cases. We cannot only bake the feedback into the product, but bake it into our policies."
I just can't square that with your interpretation. It's very clear he thinks that Google is running the Explorer program for the feedback they're getting, so they can use it to improve their product. Moreover, making a point of incorporating that feedback into their policies rather than just their product demonstrates that Google's position isn't anywhere near telling people to "get used to it". Which shouldn't be surprising - telling people to "Deal with it" was part of his description of the path they didn't follow.
"What we decided to do instead was have a living laboratory for a very public experiment. Is it messy? Sure. And are there are things that you couldn't predict? Absolutely. But there is all of this feedback that you get from these Explorers and these use cases. We cannot only bake the feedback into the product, but bake it into our policies."
I just can't square that with your interpretation. It's very clear he thinks that Google is running the Explorer program for the feedback they're getting, so they can use it to improve their product. Moreover, making a point of incorporating that feedback into their policies rather than just their product demonstrates that Google's position isn't anywhere near telling people to "get used to it". Which shouldn't be surprising - telling people to "Deal with it" was part of his description of the path they didn't follow.