I'm not sure how one excuses the other really (especially since the other is a corporation of 100k+ people). This tit-for-tat behaviour really spirals into destructive retaliations which are bad for everyone.
The benefit of what doubt? No matter how much you distrust Google, we can’t really presume they’re guilty of hypothetical accusations that haven’t actually been made.
Then again the activists have proven to be pretty dishonest themselves. Timnit lied about who fired her, hid the fact that she gave an ultimatum and has now dedicated time to publicly smear and attack everyone at Google, including listing people who should be fired (by name!) on Twitter. Not to mention the abusive behaviour she showed towards the FB head of AI on Twitter who stopped posting as a result. She never apologised, although she demands apology from Google coworkers.
The other activist was fired when she deployed political messaging code in production while hiding the whole process from her team and manager.
Do those strike as a people that will honestly present their story and would be good to work with? Ones that happily lie and fudge the truth to drive their agendas?
Because in my experience people who act like this, no matter what skin color they have, are corrosive and abusive to work with.