This is ethics for Google's AI+Search which is currently undergoing global scrutiny, particularly by Congress and specific politicians who are considering anti-trust measures against Google - and who believe that 'their political party is being treated unfairly'.

It's existential concern for them right now, relating to the possible breakup of the company.

Every public communication on 'ethics' or search results etc. at Google is obviously going to have to be reviewed.

If you're publishing the latest thing on 'AI Random Number Generation' obviously nobody cares about anything other than IP.

The fact is, she must have known this and submitted anyhow - which is in and of itself not so bad, but that there was calamity afterwards ... there is no excuse.

Google was absolutely reasonable - they did not ask to change the nature of the research, but wanted to make sure that information about new, better processes were included.

It's beyond gracious for Google to do this, when really their starting point is 'silence' and they really don't have to do anything at all.

A request for a fairly short review with very basic and reasonable concerns blew up.

This is not a public university, you don't get perfectly tenured academic freedom, if Google wants to put a reasonable subnote in there - and take 2 weeks to do it, it's perfectly fine.

Obviously Google would have kept her if they wanted to, but it's clear they were both looking for a way to part ways and it's probably for the better.