What's the point of it being free if it is not reliable? Who has the time to keep trying if the service is up again?
In my opinion, Google may not be interested in making it reliable so that users get frustrated and walk away, giving Google an out of the service altogether.

Not really! If its not reliable we would still have to have a home devise that works all the time.

it has never worked for my iPhone4 ... even standing directly below one of the street light pole-mounted repeaters.

I even paid several hundred dollars to get an antenna attached to my roof, directed at the nearest node. (My home is over a block from it.) This approach worked fairly well for awhile and then would stop at about 8 pm every evening--maybe because that's when all of MV got on-line after dinner?

I had to go back to Comcast to get reliable service--life is too short to be without internet connection. Being without internet is like being without running water was decades ago.

Internet access is a utility, period. It should never go down and when it does an immediate repair is warranted.