What's the business value of publishing this research in the first place vs keeping it private? Following this train of thought will lead you to the answer to y

What's the business value of publishing this research in the first place vs keeping it private? Following this train of thought will lead you to the answer to your implied question. Apart from that - they publish the paper and anybody can reimplement and train the same model. It's not trivial but it's also completely feasible to do for lots of hobbyists in the field in a matter of a few days. Google doesn't need to publish a free use trained model themselves and associate that with their brand. That being said, I agree with you, the "ethics" of imposing trivially bypassable restrictions on these models is silly. Ethics should be applied to what people use these models for.