I've certainly seen and heard of Google modifying results or puting punishments on users because they broach topics that violate their terms of service.
I will absolutely agree that the rules of their ToS are heavily determined by the desires of advertisers and written laws.
But just because they may restrict the content based off of advertiser's wishes or because they are legally required to do so doesn't mean that Google is in bed with the government and willing to do anything to prop up the government's power so they can keep making money from them.
That's a really big and important jump you can't just hand wave away just because a company as large as Google works with the government on some things. That's just conspiracy theory and detracts from the very real, evidence based criticisms we can and should be focusing on.
The issue isnt really the color, it's that all images and video are degraded in quality. That means android users are excluded from iphone group chats. This is a bug deal in America where iphones are incredibly popular.
I think it's fair to be excited that people are working on ways to bridge the divide. Especially when the technical aspects of the reverse engineering is pretty cool. Not to mention the proof of concept was originally made by a high school student!