Late last year, bosses moved engineers away from working on the controversial project, known as Dragonfly, and said that there were no current plans to launch it. However, a group of employees at the company was unsatisfied with the lack of information from leadership on the issue — and took matters into their own hands.

https://theintercept.com/2019/03/04/google-ongoing-project-dragonfly/

There was an awful lot of waffle in all the original Google denials about continuing.  Don't trust them.

All that $$$ that could be made in the Chinese market, that's what counts. I think that's the inevitable driver.

It's a gamble:  if they launch a Red Chinese approved search engine and:

1. China and USA get into a war, Google could be branded as sympathizers,

2. China has a civil war, Google could be viewed by the other side as being Communist collaborators.