Possible that it was in internal limbo for a while, and that the decision to release it as a community project actually may bring it back to life, even among Google staff.
(Never worked in Google, but it may be easier for interested employees to contribute to external open-source projects than internal projects with no resource allocation.)
(Never worked in Google, but it may be easier for interested employees to contribute to external open-source projects than internal projects with no resource allocation.)