To be sure, Google has other objectives. But the people in this area are essentially academics, and I'd expect them to have a similar process given their backgrounds. The papers from Google are routinely of high calibre.

The non-research motive is arguably to control the narrative about using ML (I admit I still choke at calling it AI) and big data techniques. I fail to see how this is advanced by having a very public spat.

I've no doubt some senior exec decided she had to go, but I don't think it is because of any intersectional reason, or to cover up any particular publication, but that she wasn't seen as an asset to the company. Strategies for negotiating exercise of power are very different at Google to social sciences academia (or twitter, which is engorged with righteousness over this), which she seems not to have grasped. There are few enfants terribles in corporate tech that don't have controlling stock.