ggppjj

That was where it was uploaded first, the takedowns were for it being later hosted on azure cloud services

Reporting about how the maps team reclassified the US as a “sensitive country”, a la: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/28/google-reclassifies-us-as-sensitive-country-like-china-russia-.html

Step two of the plan you outlined was inverted by Google, but the effect is the same: IIRC it only shows up that way for US users.

Edit: apparently that was either a lie or incomplete info, see comments elsewhere in this thread.