But it's all rigged in the end.
So Google pushed the perverseness as far as basically creating a fake research lab to cover it all.
Also, many large corporations are best thought of as multiple personalities, with different parts of the organization acting in different ways.
A lot more likely explanation is that they did setup the research lab with 100% honest intentions (i.e. they expected that it would produce value to them) but then it turned out that the results didn't meet their expectations and/or they slowly figured out that they don't have to adhere to all the rules and principles they set out for themselves earlier.