I work at Google but don't have any visibility into this project, nor do I speak for Google on this. My uninformed guess is that the answer is more precisely:

I work at Google but don't have any visibility into this project, nor do I speak for Google on this. My uninformed guess is that the answer is more precisely: 5. They very much want this project to succeed so that it can save lives. They know privacy concerns are (rightly) an existential threat to the success of the project, so they are trying to address those by drawing this firm line. It's not 1 or 3 because anyone can look at the location data Google gathers on them and judge for themselves if it's crap. Just search for "view google location history" and it will take you right there. I think 2 is pretty close to the mark. Despite HN's understandably cynical take, everyone I talk to at Google cares a lot about user privacy.