Because Google is an advertising company, their search engine controls what people believe in and they also have some good engineers but they are probably not well known. There is very little they couldn't advertise into popularity. Whenever you see overcomplicated software or infrastructure its always a way to waste executive function, create frustration and create unnecessary mental overhead. If the technology you're using isn't making it easier for you to run your infrastructure from memory, reduce the use of executive function and decrease frustration then you should ignore it. Don't fall for the fashion trends.
I'm not criticizing. I've actually used kubernetes and read the source code. It's a good tool, I just think its too much mental overhead for most companies since they won't use most of what it provides. If you're working on a large team with responsible parties who have a clearly defined roles it is a great tool but I've seen two person projects with startup infrastructure waste obscene amounts of time learning Kubernetes when they could have just stood up something basic with configuration management to get started and migrate to Kubernetes when it was reasonable to do so. People need to start with a goal and then ask what tool meets the objectives of their goal. In a lot of cases people complain about the tool they are using because they start with Kubernetes and then try to figure out how they can use it on the job.
Your point is do something simple because k8s is hard? 1) even small scale dev teams an business still need non simple.software processes. 2) learning Kubernetes is easier now than learning the underlying cloud. It's really about all the other things k8s provides. Maybe you haven't seen it used in enough contexts yet to appreciate those other benefits?
