I don't see anything about the product that made Google leadership look bad? I don't see that anyone else external to Google thought so either, before they fired him? Firing him makes them look bad, however.
So it was done on the clock as a project at Developer Relations team, I don't know if that should be called a personal project or not, maybe, it does seem Developer Relations projects could be one person's idea and execution, but just to be clear on what happened.
It was released 2 and a half months before Google IO.
The way I read this, they decided to announce it at Google IO because of the attention the project released by the Developer Relations team got. No one with inside knowledge has said the "official tool" (not from Dev Relations) was already planned when it was released. Maybe it was. Maybe a guy on the Dev Relations team would or should have known it was if it was. Easy for me to believe it was not however.