[Mr_P]

I think they should have let him publish the paper.

We've seen time and again that various trends in ML turn out to have actually been dead-ends.

A few examples: https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.06356 https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03678

That said, I've also seen plenty of competitive drama in FAANG research labs, so this story is not hard to believe. More senior engineers often will use their seniority to power-grab control of projects. It sounds like Google execs did the right thing in the end.