It’s appallingly bad faith.

Google have a page where they give advice on “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content”:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creat...

Things like “Provide a great page experience”, “Focus on people-first content”, and “Avoid creating search engine-first content”.

This article reframes it as an unfulfilled obligation and betrayal because ‘Google Promised to Reward Publishers Who Invest Resources Into Content Created “By People, For People”’