Occam's razor. Is it a giant conspiracy coordinated by some Other Entity with Power and Influence able to manipulate NYT as well as Google to maximize the impact of their destructive forces?

Or... because of all the bad publicity and Uber being in the limelight, those who were already feel uncomfortable about what they saw finally got the initiative to speak out... and the news media finds the story hot enough to publish because of the #DeleteUber campaign... and throw in some consequential timing at Google.