The researchers want credit for their work. Google wants to stay ahed of their competitors. Google has three moves: 1) Allow publishing everything including so

The researchers want credit for their work. Google wants to stay ahed of their competitors. Google has three moves: 1) Allow publishing everything including source code => this helps the competitor directly. Bad move. 2) Disallow publishing => the researchers will be tempted to switch jobs for their competitor, since staying at Google will hurt their career. Bad move. 3) Allow publishing, but disallow everything else => this helps the competitors a little, but not too much. The researchers get credit for their work, which removes any incentive they have at switching jobs. Seems like the best compromise. At least, that's my speculative take on this. Sure, OpenAI & StabilityAI get the credit in the public's eye, but there are also other incentives at play.