It's standard practice to check in with stakeholders before submitting a paper. The important issue in the paper seems to be that the paper villainized large l

It's standard practice to check in with stakeholders before submitting a paper. The important issue in the paper seems to be that the paper villainized large language models, which Google has a vested interest in. The paper was likely publishable with a bit more context in the introduction. I've been in similar situations and they were handled offline. The explosiveness of this situation seems to have been prepared the history of Timnit's relationship with Google. This incident was just the spark.