Great question! Here's a scenario, though I don't know if it's the case here: Image that one set of NDA'd data was included in the paper, that painted Google i

Great question! Here's a scenario, though I don't know if it's the case here: Image that one set of NDA'd data was included in the paper, that painted Google in a bad light, but a different set of NDA'd data was excluded in paper, that painted Google in a good light. I have no idea if that's what's going on here. But if some of the people who objected to publishing the paper thought this was happening, it may explain their objections to publishing the work.