It is not research, let alone science when you are striking a positive tone, it’s fraud.
But while that's ok in a slide deck, it's _not_ ok in a research paper. Researchers aren't (shouldn't be) accountable to business outcomes, but rather the truth of what they argue.
It's tough to see this play out real time.
If Google is funding its own research, it should be able to look at whatever it wants. Why do we hold Google to a standard that most other companies are far worse at following?
The appropriate place for independent critical research is outside of the company itself.
Google is actually a pretty well intentioned entity to put out as much self critical research as it does.
This isn't relegated to science or management - we're seeing it all across society these days. Nuance is dead. If the message cannot be delivered in a 120 character tweet, and cannot self-gratify 50 million teenage viewers with only a superficial understanding of the topic, then it shouldn't be a public position at all. Of course, I'm slightly exaggerating.
But the consequence is very real - organizations, whether corporate or scientific, whether public or private have had to drop an iron curtain around their honest nuanced internal strategies in order to avoid the attention of the hyperbolic and outrage-fueled social media world.
if a business funds research, they expect the funding to have a positive ROI. Therefore, the business will pressure research towards this, and thus, will inevitably make the research accountable for an outcome.
This is why fundamental research should be publicly funded, and publicly available.