There's a lot of speculation going on here. The version of the paper I read did not feel like an early draft at all, but a final one. This is just the excuse

There's a lot of speculation going on here. The version of the paper I read did not feel like an early draft at all, but a final one. This is just the excuse Emily Bender is using to avoid providing Technology Review with a copy of the paper. You're right; they wouldn't have submitted an early rough draft for peer review at a conference (these aren't amateurs we're talking about here!). The real reason I suspect she didn't want the paper published is that the other 4 colleagues are still employees at Google and could get in trouble, seeing as how Google doesn't want it published and all.