There is a cleaner way to fix this, especially given that these two things will probably eventually be merged into wp.utils together (see ongoing conversation about JS modules in core). We just need to require that the webpack version of wp.utils is loaded first. From previous discussion around #940 (comment):

word-count.js doesn't clobber window.wp.utils

So this means that the webpack version needs to be loaded first. We can accomplish this by adding wp-utils as a dependency of word-count.

Also I think it's a bit weird that as a result of this PR, our utilities would be accessed via window.wp['utils-gb'] in externall code.

Until everything that lives in wp.utils is merged into the GB version, any item that lives in that object will not be available when Gutenberg is loaded. That will mean that wp-utils will have to be a dependency for anything that core adds to the wp.utils object and then only in the context of Gutenberg so the script will load.

@nylen any suggestions for how we "add wp-utils as a dependency of word-count."? Do you mean in the webpack config?

any suggestions for how we "add wp-utils as a dependency of word-count."?

As done in f43c8e9. To test, load the plugin and verify that wp.utils.WordCounter (from core) and wp.utils.keycodes (from wp-utils) are both available.

That will mean that wp-utils will have to be a dependency for anything that core adds to the wp.utils object and then only in the context of Gutenberg so the script will load.

It doesn't quite mean that, because we will only add the word-count -> wp-utils dependency when we are actually loading wp-utils in Gutenberg context.

As discussed in Slack, I expect the longer-term way to resolve this will be to make wp.utils the first module that Webpack builds for us in WP core. It's a great candidate since the core version only contains this one thing.

This was not in the right place the first time around. Amended in b41ff21.

I've reverted the changes to the folder names. Thanks for your insight and help on this @nylen !