Seems to me Troy Hunt (the independent developer of https://HaveIbeenPwned.com/) and Cloudflare's Junade Ali deserve at least a mention in the Google announcement. They're pioneers of this database of pwned passwords and the ability to look up candidate passwords securely.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords
https://www.troyhunt.com/ive-just-launched-pwned-passwords-v...
Mr. Hunt personally paid to operate these services for quite a few years. Then he got sponsorship from 1Password to defray the server costs.