That was precisely my thought on seeing the news. I did not know about Google's existing entanglements with anthropic, but it seemed like a clear message - Do not panic on the money, do the work.
Example. Them doing a AB test where they remove Claude CLI from the 20$ pro plan ... they rolled it back now. Other rate limits where they publicly double your quota at NON peak times but lower it during peak quietly. These are tacky and signs of panic.
One such issue is experimentation. But when you see back to back issues, it looks odd.