The end of the article is important: "Language Council could have ignored Google's requests, but decided to remove the word in order to spark a debate." Sounds

The end of the article is important: "Language Council could have ignored Google's requests, but decided to remove the word in order to spark a debate." Sounds like the Language Council is doing a kind of tactical overreaction to keep Google and other companies from bothering them in the future. They also want people to think more about power over language.