We don't have Google's full perspective. But hearing that Ford brought an army of staffers in big gas guzzling Lincoln Navigators to make a splashy presentation and do a big deal, while Waymo was largely an advanced engineering team taking a careful smaller experimental approach... well then sure Google didn't handle the fantasy corporate deal that Ford imagined well at all.
Google had the pick of the litter between all the top car companies. Ford just thought they were way farther ahead than they were, the 'leak' to the press certainly didn't help, and were too focused on making a deal to impress Wall St instead of treating it like a collaborative tech project, which clashed with Google.
Ford's business development totally failed because they didn't understand the 'customer', what Google wanted out of the deal.
From the perspective that Google was feeling out the top automotive companies, while Ford acted like they already made the biggest deal in the self-driving car industry - when they really hadn't, they don't seem too bad to me at all.
