Hi all,

there is currently (9 July, 3pm EDT onwards) a reddit AMA (ask me anything) going on with the developers of google flights. These are the same people who are also working on ITA matrix.

The discussion contains already a few interesting answers and should give good insight into the future developments with google flights. There are also a few comments already that seem to indicate that google won't abandon ITA matrix in the near future (recent timeouts of matrix are apparently due to a rewrite of the frontend to make it compatible with other google technology, which I read to mean that matrix will stay for a little while).

The AMA can be found here.