It's not always unexpected as it is non-obvious. As the OP said:

>> think tanks are a euphemism for propaganda machine.

This is basically the reality that's being masked in this article: the Think Tank was never hired to tell the truth. Maybe find the truth, but it's certainly not Google's primary interest for them to publicly finance the promotion of an inconvenient truth. Which as far as I'm concerned makes business sense. You can't have your cake and eat it too as an activist (nor does it mean the activist is automatically right because they spoke out against the interests of their financiers either).

Similar to how Google and Apple only make token efforts at 'securing' their messaging platforms and operating systems against surveillance - to the point where business interests don't align. Any business output is largely a product of competing interests, hidden or otherwise.

Which is why voluntary donations (which includes personal time, such as open source) are so critical to tip these scales towards the general public's interest - particularly when it comes to things that also don't align with the interests of government agencies (see: surveillance) or the interests of mega-corporations/special interest groups with political pull.

Depending on government or corporate programs alone is insufficient IMO, and it's unfortunate that this third option is typically treated as an afterthought in our culture. We tend to treat time/resources as merely a dynamic between personal benefit and our maximum capacity for taxation, where donations are merely a luxury of the wealthy and/or the compassionate non-industrious types, which ends up being a minority of the public.