Google's spring-cleaning has nothing to do with their open source projects. Kubernetes is one of their most widely used open source "products" and the industry is creating an incredible community around it with several big players that could easily jump in to take over project leadership and financing.

It is actually a good thing that some k8s founding members left Google because they already got what they wanted to achieve and went on to work on stuff that Google probably wouldn't have prioritized as much, see Ark and kssonnet.

Kubernetes is IMHO the platform for cloud native applications for the next 5+ years.

Not wanting to use it because Google dropped everyone's darling (Reader) is rather naive.