I think it’s pretty clear that Google would have gone through with Dragonfly if it wasn’t for the protests against it, both from the public and Google employees.

In other words, their refraining from Dragonfly wasn’t because of moral courage or a principled stance. It was just to avoid a PR disaster.

And it was only because Dragonfly was leaked that that we ever heard of it. Imagine what other interesting programs they’ve got going on that we haven’t heard of yet.