What makes you say that?
See, eg https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/google-search-engine-chi...
See, eg https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/google-search-engine-chi...
It's one thing for a plan like this to be secret among a bunch of C-levels in a boardroom for a week. It's something else when HUNDREDS of people are involved, and a product is ready to deploy. That indicates a cultural problem within the company.
More evidence of that (again from your link):
"Company managers responded by swiftly trying to shut down employees’ access to any documents that contained information about the China censorship project, according to Google insiders who witnessed the backlash."
Googlers don't care, they get to have Google on their resume!