This thing doesn't model the brain, despite what the article claims. It's not about a brain model, it's about the data and its model. They're painstakingly adding lots of data about the world, which could serve as a resource for a brain-like model.

It's also neither closed source nor secret. The article is a bit crap so don't base your criticism of the project just from what you read there.

It's been popping up for ages, for example Businessweek, 1997:

http://www.businessweek.com/1997/25/b353210.htm